Committee on Regional Development Ordinary meeting
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REGI European Parliament
Follow its sittingsIva Marčetić
However, the results of the referendum held five years ago have not been honored and are disputed by the current political parties in power. Should a New European Bauhaus framework be applied as a supporting mechanism that upholds the decision of the referendum and improves the well-being in Berlin neighborhoods? Is it a common European value to work towards socio-economic equality? If the new European MFF is designed so as to be, and I quote, "a budget tailored to local needs with national and regional partnership plans for investment and reforms, for targeted impact where it matters most, and ensuring a faster and more flexible support for more economic, social and territorial cohesion across our Union." Is NEB going to help implement rules for all the financial institutions to offer financial paths for social, collaborative and cooperative non-profit investment in the built environment?
If the latest EU Commission research on housing speculation shows that, and I quote, "for every euro of annual rental income, listed residential funds held more than 11 euros in housing assets, unlisted residential real estate funds displayed even higher ratios, reaching 17 in 2024." This suggests that significant share of institutional investment in housing is driven by the expectation of capital appreciation in house capital appreciation rather than by housing provision itself. Will the NEB institute restrictions to the wealth accumulation through housing by facilitating the implementations of measures that curb wealth-driven housing financialization and distinguish between finance that helps people obtain a home to live in and finance that treats housing as an investment asset, and will the NEB help to apply this distinction consistently across the EU rather than leaving it to each Member State? If those could be or are the values to be upheld, then we must admit that the challenges of our built environment far surpass the scope of intervention that the current New European Bauhaus has set up for itself.
It still strongly refers to business solutions that evoke the previously tested paradigms of market dogma that has gentrified our cities and immiserated many, while an unprecedented, historically unprecedented amount of wealth has been privately accumulated on account of value we all collectively produce. Therefore, I would once more evoke the authors of the housing speculation study, claiming that challenges of our built environment need a EU coordination alongside national and local measures, and that we require essential social and economic infrastructure that benefits the well-being of citizens rather than primarily investment assets, requiring both regulation of speculative practices and greater support for social, public, cooperative and other non-financialized development models. And for that, we would need to expand the New European Bauhaus framework so that it truly can allow transformation of scale. And by that, I mean a transformation that can rise to the challenge at hand, a scale of change that was ushered some 40 years ago by World Bank and other supranational frameworks that clearly stated that their main objective is market proliferation.
Today's New European Bauhaus needs to address the question whose values is it upholding and whose well-being will the focus of the coming change be: the well-being of us who live and work here, or the well-being of capital? It is my opinion that if the New European Bauhaus is to be relevant, it needs to open avenues for structural change while leaving concepts of beauty to the member states and their communities and architects. This, or we stand to face a kind of barbarism. Thank you.
Dragoş Benea
Thank you very much. Now we continue with Mr. Danny Pio Murphy, Associate Director at DBFL Consulting Engineers from Ireland. Mr. Murphy, you have the floor.
Danny Pio Murphy
Thank you. Chair, honorable members of the committee and fellow speakers, thank you for this invitation today. I would like to share five practical lessons in delivering inclusive, sustainable and successful places and consider how those lessons can inform the next phase of the New European Bauhaus initiative. My perspective is that of an engineering and planning practitioner. For almost 15 years, I have worked with local authorities, developers, design teams and communities to translate policy objectives into places and infrastructure that people use every day.
My work covers transport planning, sustainable mobility, public realm, and regional infrastructure. I'm a strong advocate for accessibility and inclusion, so my contribution today is therefore not about the initiative's administration or program. It is about practical delivery that teaches that we can translate into the initiative. To start, people do not experience policy. They experience places.
They experience whether they can cross a road safely, reach school, access employment services, or participate independently in community life. That everyday experience should be the starting point on how we judge a successful built environment investment. Making a public place a success, or indeed any type of project underneath this initiative, it is a multidimensional and integrated approach with many components to consider.
However, in practice, successful places consistently combine three things. They are sustainable, inclusive, beautiful, meaning attractive, liveable, and valued by their communities. These are not separate objectives, they depend on each other and they must be supported by communication, engagement, and co-design throughout. These practical characteristics align directly with the values of the New European Bauhaus initiative. That is important because it demonstrates that this initiative does not have abstract policy ideas, it reflects on lessons already evident in successful projects across Europe.
The objectives are right, the challenge is delivering them consistently and that is where the practical lessons begin. The first principle of successful places is inclusion must be designed from the start to the finish and beyond. Universal and inclusive design means creating integrated solutions that works for the widest possible range of people, rather than providing separate or lesser alternatives and unintentional exclusion. Inclusion often fails when we address it only too late in the process. The practical lesson is engage with the end user and communities while the brief is still open and to judge the success on who can participate independently, safely, and with dignity.
The second principle is communities help create better places. Local residents understand a street, neighborhood, and service functions every day. That knowledge can reveal issues that surveys or technical analysis alone cannot capture. Meaningful participation starts early, continues through delivery, and closes the loop by explaining what changed, what did not, and why. Co-design does not replace professional judgment, it improves the evidence on which that judgment is based and supports long-term community ownership.
The third principle is that scale does not determine value. A safer crossing, an accessible route, a school street, or a small public space can materially change whether people can complete an everyday journey or participate independently. These interventions are local and visible, which is often where people experience change most directly. But small projects can fail when they're delivered in isolation. Small interventions should therefore be in a connected network or a clear long-term plan.
The fourth principle is sustainability should deliver benefits people can experience in their everyday lives. These include shade from extreme heat, drainage from heavy rainfall, cleaner air, safer active travel, and public spaces where people want to spend time. But sustainability fails when maintenance is not funded. Funding decisions must therefore consider the lifelong place, not simply the construction. The fifth and final principle is long-term thinking.
Political mandates and funding programs are relatively short. The buildings, streets, and infrastructure remain in use for decades. Each generation inherits the consequence of earlier planning and investment decisions. The full benefits of a successful project may also emerge over decades rather than an individual electoral cycle. The question should not be whether they can be provided now, but whether the place can still thrive and serve its community 20, 30 years' time.
These principles must also remain relevant in a rapidly changing world.
Climate impacts, demographic change, new technology, and the rising expectation of inclusion will test the place where we are designed today. The physical and digital environment is increasingly overlapping, and sustainability is evolving to include sustainable social and economic values while still including environmental values. Good design, therefore, must be adaptable, not simply compliant with present-day requirements. This is also a territorial cohesion issue. Good places is not limited to capitals or flagship schemes.
Regional towns, villages, and rural communities also need access to opportunities, services, and quality infrastructure. Cohesion is also affected by the limited staffing and specialist expertise, difficult in funding applications, short funding windows, and fragmented responsibilities. Europe already has strong examples: Barcelona, Ghent, Vienna, Paris. These differ in scale and context, but each show what sustainable placemaking can deliver and achieve. These projects were not produced by isolated design ideas.
They were supported by long-term political commitment, consistent investment, strong local delivery capacity, clear design standards, and community support.
Europe does not lack good ideas. The problem is that the conditions needed to deliver them remain uneven, leaving good practice as an exception rather than the norm. I would therefore suggest three priorities to incorporate in the next phase of the New European Bauhaus initiative. First, design for inclusion from the start. Inclusion and universal design should shape the brief, procurement, design, delivery, and operation, not checked only at the end.
Second, co-design with communities and support local delivery capacity. Local and regional authorities need sufficient staff, specialist expertise, appropriated funding routes, and resources to take projects from initial ideas to operational and evaluation. Third, scale what works for the long term.
Europe should support an adaptation of proven approaches across different local contexts while respecting local identity and measuring their value over generations rather than individual funding or electoral cycles. The success of the New European Bauhaus initiative should be measured not simply by the number of projects it funds, but whether every community can benefit from places that are sustainable, inclusive, and designed for people. Europe knows what good practice looks like. The task now is to deliver them to everyday delivery. Thank you.
Dragoş Benea
Thank you, and now I give the floor to Ms. Ruth Schagemann, architect, managing director, Brussels office of the German Federal Chamber of Architects and former president of the Architects' Council of Europe.
Ruth Schagemann
Thank you very much for the introduction. Chair Benea, thank you for having me here. Honorable members of the European Parliament, dear colleagues. You are deciding how the next budget will become something people can see, use, and trust. At its heart, there is a simple choice.
Will Europe treat quality for what it is, the way public investment creates lasting value? The New European Bauhaus began as an invitation to imagine. It became a shared language.
Now it must become a framework for implementation. Because the question at the moment is not only how many homes we build, how much energy we save, or how many euros we absorb. The real question is, dear ladies and gentlemen, what remains when the money has been spent? What kind of neighborhoods do we want to live in? What kind of school do we want to send our children?
What kind of town center do we need and what kind of public space is valuable? That is the political purpose of the New European Bauhaus. It prevents housing, climate, cohesion, and cultural policy from producing separate answers to the same place. Because policy becomes real in places where people live, work, feel free, and are at home. 89% find natural environments calming.
And the economic dimension is equally clear.
The construction ecosystem employs almost 25 million people across the European Union and generates 9.6% of EU value added. So this is not a niche discussion that we are having here today. This is about how Europe invests. I see this from two connected perspectives: as former president of the Architects' Council of Europe and today as managing director of the BAK office in Brussels. Together with Evelin Lux, she's also today with us here in the Parliament, vice president of the BAK, we want to make one point unmistakable.
Design quality is not the decorative end of policy. It is part of Europe's delivery capacity. Through Germany's 16 regional chambers, the BAK represents more than 140,000 architects and planners. Their annual planning volume of around 18 billion euros helps steer roughly 40 billion euros of construction investment. That is the leverage of planning and design.
A comparatively small investment can have an enormous economic, environmental, social and cultural effect.
We just saw it, you explained it very profoundly. Because planning and design is where public money either acquires long-term value or locks in long-term cost. So what have we learned from the New European Bauhaus? Three practical things. Retain before replacing.
Select quality before price. Involve people before the brief is fixed. In Heidelberg, the Collegium Academicum supported by the ERDF, that is your invested money, and winner of the 2025 New European Bauhaus Affordable Housing Award, provides affordable homes for 176 young people. Its flexible timber structure can adapt as needs change and its residents govern the place themselves. In Gerbstedt, Saxony-Anhalt, 1.17 million euros from the Just Transition Fund is secured a listed locomotive shed as the first step towards a regional hub connecting industrial heritage, communities, and economic activity.
This is the New European Bauhaus in practice, and there are many more examples. Quality does not add cost at the end. Quality creates value from the beginning. Both are cohesion policies with a front door. This brings me to procurement.
Because every cohesion euro that enters the built environment enters through a procedure. Europe's architectural market is overwhelmingly made up of small practices. Around 70% are one-person offices. Yet, only 6% placed a public bid in 2023. Through the ArchE and the BAK, ArchE is a European project, the Federal Chamber of German Architects and our European partners, we are mapping cross-border barriers and connecting public clients with tested procedures.
This is not professional protectionism. It is internal market policy. We need proportionate requirements, accessible procedures, and competition on quality, not simply on the lowest initial price.
That is why the reform of the public procurement directive is directly relevant to your committee here and for your discussion. The Parliament therefore needs a quality test that travels from the European funding from eligibility to award and oversight. It should address reuse, whole-life carbon, affordability, quality-based selection, inclusion, resilience and local identity. Because if the next multi-annual financial framework counts only units, euros and deadlines, it will tell us how much Europe spends, but not what Europe creates. You have three cumulative levers.
First, make funding visible. Give the New European Bauhaus a traceable financial home in the next MFF and make clear where its objectives are funded and what results are delivered. Simplification must not mean invisibility. Second, make quality enforceable. Connect eligibility and award criteria to quality, recognize the specific character of intellectual services, protect design competitions and prevent lowest initial price from masquerading as best value.
Third, make delivery possible. Finance early stage of planning and design, participation, technical capacity for regions, municipalities and public clients. Chambers and professional networks can translate European objectives into projects and return implementation evidence to Europe. The New European Bauhaus should not prescribe a European style. It should establish a European standard of care.
A mutual annual financial framework is never only a budget. It is a design for Europe. Every eligibility rule draws a boundary, every award criterion sets a value, every funded project leaves a place behind. The BAK is ready to contribute to implementation through better renovation, better competitions, capable public clients and places that cities recognize as their own. So our request to you is simple.
Make funding visible, make quality enforceable, make delivery possible. Do that and Europe will not simply spend more, Europe will build better for all of us.
Dragoş Benea
Thank you. Thank you very much. We now move to the Q&A and we start with Ms. Sabrina Repp from S&D.
Sabrina Repp
Okay, thank you very much. Maybe we can also start with the round of coordinators or is it really okay because Markus, it is your topic? Okay. Okay, then I can start. Thank you very much.
Vielen Dank für die Ausführungen. Es hat mich sehr gefreut, dass Sie heute hier sind. Ich habe ein paar Fragen mitgebracht, wo ich mich sehr freuen würde, wenn Sie die beantworten könnten. Zur ersten Rednerin. Soll ich oder geht ja?
Zur ersten Rednerin. Yeah, I can wait a second, no worries. Or I can also switch into English if you prefer. Okay, maybe it is easier. Okay.
You said many things about, for example, Vonovia and the relation between different levels, they really have to collaborate more closely.
And maybe you can explain more recommendations to that because from us from the European Parliament, it is really important that when we are talking about our perspective here, that it is possible that the initiatives and also the regions and districts really can relate to that. And maybe you can tell us a little bit more about the relations between the different levels and what should also the European Parliament strengthen to that, that for example, big companies like Vonovia don't have that monopolized character they have now, for example, in Germany. Another thing I found really interesting Mr. Murphy said, because you said that it is really important when we are talking about sustainability that it takes some time. It is not like, okay, tomorrow everything will be possible and fit into our ideas. So my question refers to because we are talking about performance regulation also to the next MFF.
But when we are looking into the new European Bauhaus, then it's really important from my point of view that we have some space also to invest in sustainability that maybe refers to 15, 20 years and we we we can build up that strong relation with the new European Bauhaus. Personally, I'm from a rural area, from Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.
And often we've talked about bigger cities also you in your presentation. And I'm really interested in how we can implement the new European Bauhaus more in, for example, rural areas so that people also who are living there can refer to that first of all concept, but also can that the new European Bauhaus is also open for them. This is something that is for me really important, that it is not only something that refers to bigger cities, but also to rural areas. And maybe you can have some points of that on that. Thank you.
Marcos Ros Sempere
Gracias, presidente, y muchas gracias a las tres personas que han venido como stakeholders a explicarnos sus experiencias durante estos seis años de implementación de la Nueva Bauhaus Europea.
A mí me gusta recordar que hace solo seis años, justo en el debate sobre el estado de la Unión, nadie sabía lo que era la Nueva Bauhaus Europea, una iniciativa que ha ido construyéndose de abajo arriba, creando comunidad y que hemos tenido en muchos eventos que explicar qué era, hasta que ahora ya no hay que explicar qué es. Ya todo el mundo sabe que es una iniciativa que quiere que el cambio de nuestro espacio construido, de los lugares donde vivimos, nuestras ciudades, nuestros barrios, nuestros edificios, nuestras viviendas, se haga en base a tres grandes valores: sostenibilidad, belleza e inclusión, y en base también a tres grandes principios de actuación: la participación ciudadana, la creación de comunidades, se ha dicho hace un rato, la combinación de lo local y lo global y la interdisciplinariedad. Pero también me gusta recordar que es una iniciativa que ha conseguido mucho, muchísimos proyectos piloto, decía un orador que no se cuantifique, que no hay que cuantificar, sino que hay que ver cuáles son realmente los que permanecen y los de calidad, pero que nació sin presupuesto. Y ahora precisamente estamos debatiendo el presupuesto de la Unión Europea para 2028-2027. Y si una iniciativa que no estaba en el marco financiero 2021-2027 ha conseguido tanto, ahora tenemos la oportunidad que en el marco financiero 28-34 podamos incorporarla realmente y conseguir mucho más, conseguir entrar en esa, en ese cambio de paradigma y que esa transformación de nuestros entornos construidos donde vivimos cada día no sea solo una mera cuestión de la voluntad de los administradores locales o regionales, sino que esté incorporada en nuestras prioridades políticas de este presupuesto.
Ese es el gran desafío que tenemos y tenemos modelos de estos seis años que pueden reproducirse, que pueden ampliarse en nuestras ciudades y territorios rurales y regiones de toda Europa, especialmente en aquellos territorios que no cuentan con una capacidad administrativa o recursos para lanzar esos proyectos. Y yo creo que este debate en esta Comisión de Desarrollo Regional donde debatimos de la política de cohesión, y es una pena que estemos solamente dos grupos de los ocho grupos políticos hoy en esta comisión, es crucial porque lo que necesitamos para la New Bauhaus es cambiar la forma en que diseñamos y ejecutamos nuestras inversiones y eso es justamente lo que estamos haciendo en estos meses de preparación de los reglamentos, de los NRRP, del FEDER y del marco financiero plurianual en general.
Yo les haría una segunda pregunta, aunque muchos de ustedes ya lo han dicho, una pregunta para que nos dejen una reflexión, me da igual en positivo o en negativo. Si lo dijera en negativo diría, desde su experiencia sobre el terreno, ¿cuál es el principal obstáculo o cuál es la parte más complicada que ustedes se han encontrado en estos seis años para que los proyectos New European Bauhaus hayan tenido éxito y que sobre todo que esos proyectos que hayan tenido éxito puedan reproducirse y ampliarse en otras ciudades? Si es si ha sido la financiación, si ha sido la capacidad administrativa, la contratación pública, la gobernanza o algún otro factor. O si lo quieren poner en positivo, ¿cuál ha sido el elemento que más les ha ayudado a desarrollar proyectos para que lo incorporemos en nuestras previsiones para futuro e ir poco a poco eliminando obstáculos y que la nueva Bauhaus europea pase ya a ser una segunda fase en el que todo el mundo pueda beneficiarse de sus resultados? Muchas gracias.
Gordan Bosanac
Thank you chair and thanks to all of the speakers for sharing your vision of New European Bauhaus and I do agree with a lot of things you have been said about the future, about the necessary to build sustainable, participatory, in respect to the climate and to have beautiful spaces. But how are we sure that we are going in this direction? Because I really have to refer what also Ms. Marzec said in her introductory speech about the values we are bringing to the New European Bauhaus.
And probably you've been following the discussion in this Parliament and you maybe know that once when we had adopted the latest report on housing, solving housing crisis in European Union, we couldn't find majority and consensus to name the housing crisis, the right to housing as a human right. We named that in a report of the REGI committee, but on the general housing report we missed that opportunity. And moreover, we are hearing and getting more and more calls about the simplification, simplification of planning, simplification of permitting system, extending zoning additional lands giving to, you know, for building, etc. All in cover of, in direction to have more affordable housing, but at the same time when we are asking for safeguards and guarantees that this simplification will not be used, we don't find majority around those safeguards. So is New European Bauhaus under the threat?
You know, if we will liberalize and simplify everything around new constructions, are we actually threatening the vision and idea of the beauty, solidarity, participation, taking care on climate, etc. in construction? So this is the question for all of you. Thank you.
Hannes Heide
Herzlichen Dank, herzlichen Dank auch an die Referentinnen und den Referenten. Bei der beim Start des Neuen Bauhaus gab es viel Hoffnung und große Erwartungen und es war vieles, was die Menschen hineininterpretieren konnten. Als Mitglied des Kulturausschusses muss ich sagen, ich kenne in meinem Heimatland kein einziges Projekt des Neuen Bauhaus. Muss sagen, in Vorbereitung dieser dieses Hearings habe ich mir die Liste angesehen und ich bedauere, dass die Projekte im Wesentlichen in urbanen Zentren stattfinden und dass der urbane Raum nicht erreicht wurde. Meine Frage ist daher, gibt es zu wenig Information und warum erreicht ein Projekt, das so viel Potenzial hat und das sich Bürgerbeteiligung ans Heft schreibt, nicht die Menschen und warum gibt es keine Information?
Und ich möchte noch einmal hinweisen, Projekte braucht es in der Peripherie, braucht es im ländlichen Raum. Und Bauen dort ist tatsächlich nicht so, dass gute Qualität nicht teuer ist. Es ist tatsächlich teurer. Und wenn wir gegen Landverbrauch vorgehen wollen und wenn wir Leerflächen nutzen wollen, dann sind es nicht die urbanen Zentren, die leben, wo wir investieren müssen und wo wir Projekte brauchen, sondern es ist das in der Peripherie, wo die Menschen ohnehin am kritischsten gegenüber der Europäischen Union sind.
Und es geht um Energieeffizienz in diesen Gebäuden, im Widerspruch zu Denkmalschutz oft. Und genau dort sollten solche Projekte umgesetzt werden. Und ich möchte auch Kulturstätten, kulturelle Begegnungszentren in den Mittelpunkt rücken. Es gibt einen Europäischen Rechnungshofbericht, dass die sozioökonomischen Auswirkungen, die Effizienz von Förderungen dort am größten ist. Und wenn dieses Projekt und wenn das neue Bauhaus erfolgreich sein will, dann muss es dort investieren und dann muss es dort die Menschen erreichen.
Dann kann man ein neues Bewusstsein schaffen. Und dort gibt es den größten Bedarf. Und meine eine weitere Frage von mir ist auch: Wie wurden die bisherigen Projekte ausgewählt? Welche Kriterien? Und warum oder täuscht mein Eindruck, dass es doch eher wieder in den urbanen Raum geht und dass die Peripherie außen vor ist?
Zumindest das ist meine Erfahrung. Menschen, die kommen oft gar nicht oder Projekte kommen überhaupt gar nicht zur Antragstellung, weil man von vornherein sagt, das ist nichts oder es gibt gerade keinen Call und sie tun sich sehr schwer. Und dann kann so ein Projekt kein Erfolg werden.
Dragoş Benea
Thank you. Now I give the floor to our experts to hear their answers and comments. And we start in the same order.
Iva Marčetić
Okay, thank you for these quite engaged questions.
Yes, I would offer my answers as good as I can. Well, let's start first with the monopolization or about the question of Vonovia and then perhaps the question of rural aspect of the NEB can be kind of tied together. So first, question of Vonovia, we kind of, that's a larger, that's a question of or a consequence of privatization of big housing companies in Germany that resulted in this kind of monopolization. And how do you combat or how do you prevent that? I mean, I would say that if the NEB or New European Bauhaus is a set of rule, a set of, it's a kind of a framework or set of values, then it would mean that in a sense there needs to be some kind of appreciation of the fact that there already exists citizen initiative that challenges this kind of monopolization.
And this in turn can be informed European Union, but none of this, for example, has entered, this is Germany is the biggest European country, the biggest economy, none of this, none of this question of monopolization of housing or housing economy has entered new affordable housing plan. So I am not an expert in the way that kind of European Union or how European Union can prescribe certain rules, but it needs to address this issue and it needs to kind of prevent it through, well, in my opinion socialization, but you know, we can discuss. It's an ideological question, of course. It's always an ideological question. There's no, this is not a precise science.
And this in turn can be, can inform European Union.
We can debate ideologically and then say, okay, what are our values in that sense? As for the rural aspect also, I thank you for this question because I think it's very interesting and very important. I can say that for Germany, I don't know about Austria, but I know that in Germany 65% of all built environment are one-family houses, which are mostly in outskirts of the cities or in the rural areas. So these are, this is something that we rarely kind of, that New European Bauhaus has ushered as a question within its research program.
So New European Bauhaus has research component and it has a rollout component. So in the research component this is quite an important issue of how to deal with the problems of the rural areas and that are energy problems, that are problems of old, of kind of not enough maintenance, not enough opportunities, not enough elements for social cohesion and you know, as you said, like a cultural, cultural kind of meeting and so on. So in that sense, I think that the rollouts for experiments in this kind of built environment are quite, quite important. And in my opinion that would, that would mean that we need to understand that we can't have so much of built environment where so little people are living in and just not connected with any kind of social program that would enrich that in a sense that will not be based only on having a private property over house or so on. There are programs and models of, for example, alleviating loneliness in rural areas, which is a very big problem.
We on one side have loneliness in rural areas of people living in in big houses, and on the other side we have a housing crisis. And we have a lack of models that can kind of introduce these two problems to to each other. So New European Bauhaus did is kind of working as far as I know in research capacity on these on these issues of kind of introducing opportunities for people who are living in the rural settings to kind of reinvent the way that that that house or the built environment is treated in a sense of perhaps introducing student living in in kind of big houses, having some kind of investment that goes into that into sharing houses, into help that comes intergenerational help and so on. So that is that is something that I find very interesting and that that should kind of be more and more looked at and introduced that then this also speaks to to energy questions and so on. So yeah, hopefully that answers from my part what I can what I can offer.
I there was a this this issue of a paradigm shift and where does the investment need to go to shift the paradigm. I think if the I I've underlined that in my speech if the values are not clear then what kind of paradigm shift are we having? Because the paradigm shift that we had 40 years ago clearly stated that that our built environment is something that builds wealth. And it builds private wealth. If we continue on that path then we have what we have now and we're just going to get worse.
But if we change this and understand it as building communal wealth and building kind of models where our citizens can opt whether they want to live privately or they want to kind of collect their properties and so on. For in my opinion that would be a huge paradigm shift but that is a question of values. And the question of simplification is also very important because cutting the red tape is something that has been as a concept present also for the last 40 years and then has not brought us any closer to building faster or to renovating faster or to resolving problems faster. It has just brought us to the kind of a Gordian knot where actually nothing can be resolved. And this kind of idea that we are going to simplify things and make them then more kind of better is never worked.
Empirically it doesn't work. So there are I can kind of list here building and planning models that have complicated the relations between investors, citizens, users and so on and have been much more successful than those that cut red tape. So yeah, that's my opinion on that. Yeah, and yeah, that would be yeah, that I think I've covered everything hopefully. Yeah, thank you.
Danny Pio Murphy
Yes, I think a lot of that was covered and I'll try to best cover what I have written down here. So in terms of rural projects, yes, it is a very important thing that we have equitable cohesion across the program because there is quite a lot of projects out there from the rural community across Europe. I had an example in my slides called the Dingle Digital Hub, which is an initiative in the far western edge of Europe, a peninsula jutting out into the Atlantic. And it's basically a digital hub community-led and it's run by the rural community.
And again, it aligns with the objectives of the Bauhaus initiative. And it's a community bringing in physical and digital solutions to combat climate change, biodiversity loss, bring in agriculture. And again, it's one initiative that has not really accessed the Bauhaus initiative. And there's many like that across Europe, be it like autonomous vehicles in Germany I've heard about that they're trialing, and sustainable drainage systems in villages and rural towns that are really needed that are on the front of climate change. So again, it has to be equitable.
And again, that has to be translated into the next phase of the Bauhaus initiative. And there was a question about obstacles of these projects. Again, from I echo what I said in my presentation, that communication with the public is the main one.
You have very admirable projects, but they fail at the early stages because the public are not informed about them and they are up against it and it falls. And then also a lot of our local and our regional authorities, they don't have the local capacity to deliver this. So they do need linkages up with to better delivery services, more expert specialty. Again, simplifying the process as well because accessing these funds like the Bauhaus initiative is very difficult. There's short windows to apply and it can be convoluted.
And again, we have these objectives in the Bauhaus initiative that are sustainable, that they're community-led, that they're inclusive, but those values are not being translated into the individual projects from what I see. Again, there's an inconsistency across a lot of them. And I think that covers a lot of that. Thank you very much.
Ruth Schagemann
Yes, thank you. Thank you for having the possibility to address the different questions.
First of all, I also agree the rural area is extremely important and it's important to develop and to support the rural area and therefore there one reason was that I brought the example of Gebstedt. Now it shows, and this is a New European Bauhaus project, it shows that it is possible also in rural areas. I believe, let's say, because we were also discussing about the obstacles, is as architects and urban planners, the New European Bauhaus was not something new in the sense we have not been doing this before. So we are already working long-term on these values. For us, the big change was that we suddenly discuss about quality, about beauty, about sustainability in such a place like this European Parliament.
This never happened before. It was only about energy performance, it was only about being smarter, having more technical equipment in the buildings, etc. And therefore, let's say, this is a huge opportunity that we have and not only we as architects because we are also European citizens. We love our cities, we love our rural areas and it's about, it sounds really strange to say it's about us together, but one obstacle is that we have to stop thinking in silos.
We need investment. So the financial sector has to admit, we need long-term investments. Short-term investments doesn't work. Secondly, we need, we have great research and we just heard today there are lots of elements in the research that we have to share, where we have to learn, where we have to be open to understand. It's about us as people being part of it, because if participation is needed, the citizen has to be also willing to participate.
There are areas in Europe where there is no willingness. So I think this is something that we all have to address and we are all part of it. So we cannot say, ah, you are the only one, you will save the world. Then looking at what is happening in Germany. We have the Gebäudetyp E.
It's an interesting concept because it's about simplification but maintaining quality and also lowering the cost of construction.
So also that is an idea how to maintain quality on the one side but also make construction more, yeah, lower the cost in the construction field there. And what we certainly as architects strongly believe, we don't need so much technique in the buildings. This is also something that hires the cost of of construction. And another point is what is the hen and what is the egg? New European Bauhaus is there.
We want to implement it in a broader sense. But we already have great projects that might not be New European Bauhaus and maybe we have to open our eyes and look what is happening in our rural areas, in our towns and see, oh, this mayor with his Gemeinderat, they are developing something that might not yet have the label New European Bauhaus but it really follows the principles. And I think it's something also about awareness, awareness of understanding what is going on in our built environment. And I think another point is to stop thinking that quality is always expensive.
There are interventions, they are really small, but they make a change in the community level, either in a town, in a city, and it can be a small, even art intervention can make a change. So it's about the scale of interventions that we have, from big construction sites until little art interventions that make difference in our daily life. This is maybe, yeah, my point.
Dragoş Benea
Thank you very much. Now I give the floor to Ms. Iulia Şerban, Head of Coordination of Programs Unit at DG REGIO, European Commission. Ms. Şerban, the floor is yours.
Iulia Șerban
Thank you, dear Chair, dear members of the European Parliament and panelists. I would like to start by first of all thanking the European Parliament for the continued support to New European Bauhaus over the past years, to its values, to its funding, as well as to the integration across EU policies. This also includes the 2022 report of the European Parliament on the New European Bauhaus, which was an important milestone in turning this initiative into a policy priority. Now here we are, almost six years since the day the New European Bauhaus was announced, and it is encouraging to see how far the NEB has come over these past years.
By now, it covers a community of more than 2,000 organisations in the EU and beyond, and here we include local communities, businesses, research and civil society organisations as well as public authorities. It also covers a vibrant network of federal and national authorities working together with local and regional ones, and very importantly, by now, it covers more than 700 NEB-aligned projects, which translate the NEB principles into tangible investments on the ground. Now, not far from us in Mechelen in Belgium, we have a project that brings together the students, the schools, the residents and the local organisations to test nature-based solutions, as well as to bring community perspectives into climate-friendly urban planning. In Budapest in Hungary, we have another project that looks at affordable housing. It actually transforms a former public school into affordable housing and energy-efficient one, and also works with what you just mentioned before, with intergenerational links, because it brings together the elderly, the homeowners, with the young people who are in search of an affordable house.
And actually, one of our very first projects was one promoted by a network of villages at the border between Spain and Portugal that came together to co-design solutions to address depopulation, decayed and ageing infrastructure and the limited capacity to regenerate their economic activities.
All these three examples come from cohesion policy. The first two are urban innovative actions funded by European Regional Development Fund and the latter was an Interreg cross-border project. Many more projects are being currently planned and will be delivered in the next months. As we know, member states are devoting more and more time, efforts, and resources to the NEB, also helped by the support provided by the European Commission and DG REGIO. With so many projects ongoing, it may be a bit too early to discuss about ex-post impact evaluations, but still at this stage we can come forward with a number of outcomes and takeaways from the delivery so far on the ground.
And the first one I would mention recalls what the panelists just mentioned in their interventions is the fact that the NEB brings added value to our projects. It does so by involving the residents, the end users in the design and implementation and notably by doing that from the onset, not after the project was done where someone ticked the public consultation checklist.
When doing that, of course, these projects become more relevant to address the real needs, better rooted in the local context, and at the end of the day, they also produce long-lasting effects. A second takeaway, at least applicable to cohesion policy so far, was that we saw that Member States had a keen interest in taking up the NEB principles without having a regulatory requirement to do so, which, you know, one may say it's also a bit strange not to have a compliance need there. But they did it because they believed in it and they believed in the added value it brings. And by now, 19 Member States took active actions in devoting time and resources to the NEB. And we have, in terms of, let's say, financial support, we reached already more than 830 million allocated by Member States through the cohesion policy programs to NEB projects.
And it's also satisfying to see that these projects cover all types of territories. We have them in the rural areas, in the peri-urban areas, in towns, in cities, in just transition regions, as well as to the benefit of cross-border communities. We mentioned before Germany, actually Lower Saxony was one of the very first regions in Europe that devoted just transition resources to NEB projects. Slovenia also linked the just transition to the New European Bauhaus and to integrated territorial investments focused on urban development.
In Ireland, the New European Bauhaus is intimately linked to the success of the THRIVE scheme, which renovates and revitalizes town centers. And in Romania, by now, the West region devoted its efforts into renovating and reusing cultural heritage, and two more regions, North-East and South-Muntenia, will dedicate NEB calls anytime soon in the next months. This wide variety of territories, as well as types of investments, shows also, gives us another takeaway: the fact that in cohesion policy, we didn't need an extra layer of compliance, of administration, in order to implement the NEB. Why so? Because it naturally fits the types of investments that cohesion policy supports for many years and they are very needed in Europe nowadays.
We speak about affordable and sustainable housing, energy-efficient buildings, regeneration of public spaces, sustainable, affordable and accessible public transport, renovation and reuse of cultural heritage. Was it easy all the time, especially for managing authorities and local authorities? Well, no.
And what we could witness is also that indeed some of the smaller municipalities struggle to do properly the citizen engagement part, for instance, because this requires institutional capacity, it requires skills, it requires toolboxes that could be easily used. In that respect, what we could do on our side, on Commission side, was to deploy support. We provided guidelines, we provided toolboxes, we put together communities of practitioners that come together to share the takeaways and the good lessons learned from the implementing of the New European Bauhaus, but also we sent on the ground teams of multidisciplinary teams of experts that helped on one hand small municipalities a few years ago to help them mature their NEB project pipelines, and nowadays managing authorities and intermediate bodies to learn better how to translate these principles into calls for projects, selection criteria and of course selection processes overall. That's why I was saying that in the nearby future we do hope to see more and more projects reaching all the regions in Europe. To sum up, I would say the NEB is successful there where it brings together public authorities, yes, municipalities as well, with residents, with experts, and they are contributing all together to the design and delivery of our projects.
Because at the end of the day, as you also rightfully mentioned, the NEB projects are not just deliverable, efficiency, time, compliance, technically feasible solutions. They are desirable and they are embraced by the communities. And this makes them affordable, accessible, but also it enhances their social value. And this is what we aim at the end of the day with our cohesion policy supported investments. And now the time is to draw and to build on these communities and dynamism on the ground and to see how we can bring more and more projects in Europe's regions within still this current programming period.
Thank you.
Speaker 16
Thank you. We will now move to the second panel dedicated to the ways of ensuring continuity and strengthening the role of New European Bauhaus in the post-2026, 2027 MFF.
Werner Möller
Thank you. First of all, I would like to express my thanks to the chair of the Committee on Regional Development, Mr. Dragoș Benea, and to Mrs. Andrea Minat for the invitation and for the honor of being here today. It's nice that I can start here with the second panel because we talk now about a deep rural project in Saxony-Anhalt. And I would like to speak briefly today about the experience of the Saxony-Anhalt project within the New European Bauhaus initiative. The Saxony-Anhalt project plays a special role here.
Structurally, it is divided into two components: a large NEB real-world laboratory and several smaller so-called applied NEB projects spread across Saxony-Anhalt. This itself is nothing particularly exciting.
However, both components are 100% funded by the Just Transition Fund. These two still very new European funding frameworks and value systems form a unique alliance in the Saxony-Anhalt project. I shall attempt to describe in a very concise manner the rocky but ultimately very fruitful path of this alliance in order to draw further conclusions and make recommendations or express hopes for the future of such experimental models. The anchor of my reflection is the large real-world laboratory I mentioned in Saxony-Anhalt. I have been involved in its development from the very beginning and now represent the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation with a wider circle of a real-world laboratory consortium.
This brief introduction and the slides that follow will be made available after my presentation. For this reason and due to time limitations, I will only briefly touch upon the more detailed content of the slides and move on quickly to the conclusions for questions and discussions.
The real-world laboratory in Zeitz... So the project in Zeitz is in a rural area of Saxony-Anhalt. It's near Profen, an open-pit lignite mining area, and has lost jobs in this region since the unification from once about 20,000 employees to now 1,300. And the Zekiwa pram factory in Zeitz, that's a very important one, lost 2,000 and is closed. Population of Zeitz, of the city, once was 40,500, now it's 27,000, declining trend.
What does it mean in reality? We talk about metropolitan cities and other things. That means we have more than 40% vacancy rate for residential properties and too much infrastructure, and also huge vacancy rates in industrial heritage sites in this area.
In this area about 13,000 industrial sites without any use for the future. So. Okay. What is the Zites project now? The idea was that they build up a consortium of multidisciplinary partnerships to revitalize and this site and look for the future about things which we talked about at all.
The work of this field is together from academic, design, civil society and together they develop and test ideas for sustainable, resource-conscious and community-oriented living directly on site and close to the people's everyday lives. And if you look on the cultural background, that means also coming from the Bauhaus Foundation in Dessau and the New European Bauhaus also reflected on the name of the Bauhaus and the values of the Bauhaus. And if you look on one of the mentions from the second director from Hannes Meyer, you found I thought big relations to the questions of today because building means the deliberate organization of life processes. Building as a technical process is therefore only a sub-process.
I thought this is also very important about what we're talking about. And in this sense, the New European Bauhaus project in Saxony-Anhalt will be formed. We formed first the New European Bauhaus family and make the kick-off in the year 2023. But the problems are much deeper because I want to speak now about administrative realities and project realities, between project and policy. Because the project started originally in August 2021 with the application process on a Horizon call.
It was a process about two years, the call, now, okay. The call, and we was not successful. But we got official recommendations for our project on the basic of its quality to continue. And so the state of Saxony-Anhalt exploring new options for the EU funding. And the compatibility of the NEB and the Just Transition Funds for the 2017 to 2027 funding period has been approved.
And the start was then in January 2024.
And but that makes no changes in the realities of the project because the project completion was at the end of the funding period at December 27. And that means for the project realities, we have the gap between March 22 to January 24 for develop the governance system without project work. And the time of the project from originally 60 months as a long-term project runs out to ultimately 34 months. So this was the reality we were working with. At the end, we get now the positive news that we can continue till September 2028.
What does it mean in reality? My conclusions and recommendations: the link between European Bauhaus and the JTF is a genuine contemporary update of the Bauhaus ideas because to bring together social realities and also the inequality and the asynchronicity of events and needs together. Continuation of the Saxony-Anhalt project as a prototype for the future of a New European Bauhaus related to the Just Transition Fund.
Consolidation of the principles of an administration that learns from the New European Bauhaus and JTF projects. Strengthening the emotional connection between European projects and local stakeholders. Because we have one level, the European Union, and on the other hand, we have the local people. So how can you get an emotional link between this huge scale European Union boards and the local people? Because there is no real relation.
And the next point is flexible funding arrangements depending on the occasion and tasks. Reversal of the relationships between administrative and project realities. And the last thing, last point, less administration controlling and reporting, more process-based project support and impact research. So that is what I want to say in German now. Thank you for your attention.
Herzlichen Dank für Ihre Aufmerksamkeit. And I give the word.
Dragoş Benea
Thank you. We continue with Mr. Nicolas Garbi, urban and territorial policy and diplomacy expert, Director of Public Affairs and Advocacy, Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Foundation. Mr. Garbi, you have the floor.
Nicolas Garbi
Just to precise that I'm not here in my capacity as director at the foundation, but just as individual expert. Thank you. Well, first of all, thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the members of the REGI Committee for the kind invitation. So, building up on the previous presentations... Voilà, thank you.
Thank you very much.
I just would like to maybe zoom out a little bit and provide a more policy angle and trying to also relate the NEB with actually what is at stake now with the new, I mean, the ongoing negotiation on the next budget, the next MFF, especially in relation to one of the pillars of our EU project that is cohesion policy. So, first, why the New European Bauhaus matters now? I think that MEP Marcos Ros mentioned it clearly.
The NEB started with an ongoing budget and now we can make the difference by mainstreaming it as we're negotiating the new budget. And as also a previous speaker, Madame Schagemann, mentioned, in reality we individual experts, local governments, were already working in the direction of the NEB values and perspectives. But actually what really makes the difference is to have the chance to have them mainstreamed in the EU policies. So now to have this coupled with a budget, it could really make the difference. And furthermore, we also have, as the Commission colleagues were rightly mentioning, more than 700 incredible projects all around Europe, urban, rural, coastal, that actually demonstrate also the capacity of acting and contributing to the EU objective of the NEB.
That said, what we can see is actually for this to work, possibly the initial ambition of this initiative launched by the President of the Commission should be regenerated.
Maybe it's not the right word, but what we mean is possibly to keep, let's say, and to recover this cultural, civic ambition that was in the intention of the President when the initiative was launched. So now is the moment to keep this back. And I would also like to highlight that the industrial strategy of the EU, the Industrial Acceleration Act, is also, no, a fundamental piece that should go together in this revived cultural and civic movement that we call the NEB. So that's the first element, so to recover this ambition, this vision, and with the existing reality and tools and strategies that we are setting at EU level.
The second, as many colleagues, I mean, I would say all the speakers previously mentioned, the expert one, I mean, well, to try to recover a clear narrative, a policy coherence at the different level of governance in the different silos or sectors of policy, and also try to a little bit streamline and the funding opportunities, simplify the funding mechanism, because now we are in front of an incredible, let's say, and amazing landscape opportunity of funding, but in reality, this fragmentation can become also a bottleneck for implementation, especially for the local government, the small cities, the actors that have less capacity. So in this sense, cohesion policy can really be at the core and be the foundational policy of a renewed NEB approach because of the programming opportunities that were mentioned by the Commission colleagues, but possibly especially because of the values that are behind this policy, remembering that in our treaties, cohesion, territorial cohesion, is an objective. So possibly here we have an important leverage and we see this cohesion policy as the core to a renewed NEB approach. And consequently, also the need at the territorial level really to engage everyone.
As it was said before, many actors were acting at territorial level from the private sector, from SMEs, from public utilities, from local government, from NGOs, etc., from university, already independently. Now they have the opportunity through this new ambition to act together, but let's give them the means to do it. So that's the other important dimension. So that means a place-based approach and a long-term vision that is territorial-based. So going a little bit more into that, so the New European Bauhaus as a driver for territorial cohesion and of course the way the other way around.
Bon, here obviously we have bon just few elements. Maybe I will start from the fact that, voilà, identity, I mean the European Union identity reflects our territorial structure, so is a polycentric territorial structure and it's there where it's rooted the richness of our culture, our values, our let's say concern about how we can civically build up a future for the future generation.
In this sense, intergenerational fairness is always an underlying dimension of all this. So identity starts from territories, from communities and again in our case in Europe it's even more true that the rural, the coastal dimension are total are fundamental as the urban one as it's reflected in the structure of our territories. At the same time, and this is connected with what we were mentioning before, an industrial strategy for Europe, so the Industrial Acceleration Act, the fact that we can in reality leverage territorial endogenous potential actually by having a common and shared vision of the development of our territories. In this sense, this is called, there was a great Belgian urbanist called Lucien Kroll, maybe some of you from Belgium might remember, saying that everything is landscape, tout est paysage. And it's true that first of all territories and landscape is a cultural expression of their communities and this relation is done first of all in a productive way between human and the nature.
So to rethink through NEB values our territorial development, connecting supply chains, production and the form that our territories take can be really an important driver for territorial cohesion. Of course, this applies also to cities, to our urban form. And again here, a lot of us are architects or urban planners. And as we know, this aesthetical construction, this beauty, is in reality a collective construction that starts from all the actors of the territories, starting from the citizens, talking about these emotions also that are totally needed to create this value. This aesthetic value is first of all based on emotion, but then it takes an urban form.
So it's very important that we keep this human-centered approach in urban regeneration.
And in this sense, no, to not just have to build again, but to reuse, to have incrementality type of approach, so also build on what is already built. And finally, I mean, all these territorial identities and values that can be built up need to actually foster a new identity through cross-border territorial cooperation and macro-regional cooperation projects. Voilà, concretely, now that, voilà, we have few months to go to approve the budget, right? And we've seen, I think it was this morning, a note of the Irish presidency trying to steer a little bit the conversation of the COREPER. And we see that still the discussion is about, no, the foundational elements and, let's say, the stretching the different budget and especially the different and enlarging the priority is still a bottleneck in the negotiation.
So, again, we need to still discuss on a macro level.
So here we mention a couple of, let's say, articles that are, let's say, transversal but key in order to, as we were saying at the beginning, mainstream NEB approach at territorial level, including of course the urban dimension that is key as still EU population mostly lives in urban areas. So Article 2, 3, and 5 are the one that have been identified, no, actually to integrate the right, let's say, the right wording. Of course, this should be then, voilà, reflected in more concrete tools. And I hope maybe the question and answers session can go into this direction. But maybe I would just make a quick example, or maybe not because I'm 10 minutes.
No, yes. So maybe, yeah, okay, thank you. And a quick example is the following, is that can you imagine local governments that have to receive some of the, let's say, Industrial Acceleration Act indication, especially in terms of public procurement, means Buy Europe, right? So a local government, maybe rural one, that has to implement in their public procurement Buy Europe regulation.
It's very important that actually we try to create the condition, the capacity within all the different level of governance actually to implement the policies that we ambition to. NEB with the circular economy strand, it can be a key element for the implementation at local level of the industrial acceleration act. We can have macro strategies at EU level, but still the demand, the local demand and the local implementation of the supply chains, just to make one example, is happening at the local level. So NEB approaches can actually go beyond just beautiful narrative values and great pilot projects, but can really be a tool to actually support local government, especially the middle and small one, to implement in a meaningful, impactful way and possibly avoiding inflation increase EU policies and budget. Thank you.
Dragoş Benea
We start the Q&A section and I give the floor to Mr. Marcos Ros Sempere.
Marcos Ros Sempere
Muchas gracias, chair, otra vez y gracias a los dos expertos que nos han acompañado esta tarde. Y entramos en materia en este segundo panel en cómo podemos mejorar nuestro marco financiero plurianual para, sobre todo, cómo podemos cambiarlo o implementar cosas para que mejore el desarrollo y la implantación de la New European Bauhaus Initiative. Y yo quiero recordar que hay una cosa muy clara en el marco financiero 21-27, lo he dicho antes, no había un presupuesto establecido para la NEB y se ha establecido una estrategia de fishing, de ir pescando de distintos fondos, de la New European Bauhaus Facility, del Horizonte Europa, de la iniciativa urbana europea del FEDER, también de Erasmus, de LIFE, se fue picoteando de todos los fondos para hacer iniciativas Bauhaus. Ahora lo que nos corresponde es una estrategia que incorpore tres cosas: financiación estable, gobernanza e incorporación también de los mercados, porque no olvidemos que la Nueva Bauhaus Europea no puede ser solo una cuestión de la iniciativa pública. Y en cuanto a financiación yo lo tengo claro, tenemos que ser capaces de incorporar iniciativas claras, el objetivo de la Nueva Bauhaus Europea dentro de los fondos que estamos diseñando ahora.
Tenemos los fondos del NRPP, el fondo FEDER, el fondo de competitividad europeo y agradezco que haya venido también el señor Ehler de la comisión de ITRE que está encargado de este fondo, y el fondo de Horizonte Europa. Son los cuatro fondos que a día de hoy pueden combinar iniciativas para la Nueva Bauhaus Europea desde la parte de investigación, Horizonte Europa, como ya se ha hecho, pero para la implementación los otros tres. Claro, esos fondos sin una buena gobernanza no van a servir de nada y tenemos que tener una estructura territorial clara, una estructura de actores locales. Contamos con los local chapters de la NEB que nosotros en FEDER los estamos incorporando como autoridades también que puedan gestionar fondos FEDER y con estructuras territoriales de asociación. Y creo que eso es fundamental.
No hay NEB si no funciona como comunidad local, como comunidad de base, porque la NEB no nació como la New European Bauhaus no nació como una iniciativa de arriba abajo, sino de abajo arriba. Y mientras no seamos capaces de incorporar también en nuestros reglamentos ese esquema, no va a funcionar.
Y por último, tenemos que incorporar a los mercados. Tenemos que ser capaces de que la New European Bauhaus, con la estrategia de etiquetado, ya lo hemos ya lo pedimos en nuestro informe el señor Ros Sempere y yo hace cuatro años ya va a hacer de este informe, con la estrategia de etiquetado y con otras estrategias, se cree un valor añadido para que promotores, constructores, el mercado de la rehabilitación de viviendas, del espacio público, sienta que esos valores le van a dar un valor añadido a sus productos que pongan a la venta en el mercado y se incorporen también a ese proceso. Por lo tanto, yo creo que estamos en el momento crucial y les quiero dejar una pregunta que que viene a ser parecida a la que les he hecho a los anteriores expertos. Si tuvieran que identificar un cambio concreto en cómo se puede financiar la New European Bauhaus en relación a cómo se ha financiado hasta ahora, un cambio concreto que permita el salto de escala a una experimentación a gran escala, ¿cuál sería? O por decirlo de otra manera, ¿cuál sería su prioridad financiera?
Porque la Nueva Bauhaus Europea puede financiar acciones urbanas, acciones de vivienda, acciones en territorios rurales. ¿Cuál sería su prioridad financiera para que realmente podamos entrar en una magnitud de escala más importante? Gracias.
Sabrina Repp
Thank you. Mrs. Sabrina Repp from S&D.
Ja, vielen Dank. Vielen Dank, dass Sie heute hier bei uns sind und zu uns gekommen sind. Ich durfte tatsächlich in der letzten Woche in Dessau sein. Deswegen freut es mich, Herr Möller, dass Sie hier sind. Sie suchen noch.
Ich sitze hier ganz vorne, aber alles in Ordnung. Genau.
Durfte letzte Woche in Dessau sein und war sehr beeindruckt von der Stadt. Es war erst mein zweites Mal in Dessau und bin deswegen Ihnen sehr dankbar, dass wir uns auf diesem Wege auch hier sehen. Ich habe gleich ein paar Nachfragen auch zu Ihren Ausführungen und auch zu Ihrer Arbeit. Mich würde nämlich interessieren, weil Sie natürlich jetzt sehr praktisch auch angesprochen haben, was Sie in Ihrer Arbeit tun, inwieweit Sie auch mit anderen Projekten, zum Beispiel in Sachsen-Anhalt, die mit dem neuen europäischen Bauhaus, wir hatten heute schon ein anderes Beispiel gesehen, vernetzt sind, inwieweit Sie sich da auch zusammentun, um tatsächlich das neue europäische Bauhaus auch in Form eines Netzwerks und dann am Ende auch eines Wissenstransfers weiter zu verbessern oder auch überhaupt aufzustellen. Und dann ist es natürlich ganz besonders, dass Sie ja auch da sind, als würde ich jedenfalls sagen, ich weiß nicht, ob Sie Ihre Rolle so wahrnehmen, ein Stück weit ein Vertreter auch, ja, des Bauhaus, das jetzt auch hundertjähriges gefeiert hat bei Ihnen, haben Sie ja die Folie gezeigt.
Und mich würde mal interessieren, inwieweit Sie Eigenschaften, vielleicht aber auch, ja, oder Charakteristika in dem neuen europäischen Bauhaus wahrnehmen von den Ursprüngen und inwieweit Sie denken, dass wir als Europäisches Parlament oder auch Europäische Union da vielleicht noch mal mehr auch auf Fundamente, die gelegt wurden, die vor Ort bei Ihnen gelegt wurden, zurückgreifen sollten. Das würde mich interessieren. Und weiterhin sind wir jetzt, und das geht an beide Redner, damit konfrontiert, einen neuen EU-Haushalt aufzustellen, und wir sehen, es gibt tiefgreifende Umstrukturierungen, das ist nichts Neues. Und gleichzeitig gehen wir davon aus, dass insbesondere Kohäsionsmittel weniger werden und auch der Just Transition Fonds so in seiner Form nicht mehr vorliegen wird. Und Herr Müller, Sie haben gesagt, Sie haben maßgeblich vom Just Transition Fonds auch profitiert.
Mich würde einmal interessieren, wie Sie diese Entwicklung sehen, wenngleich natürlich Sie auch deutlich gemacht haben, dass das neue europäische Bauhaus ein Querschnittsthema sein soll, auch über die verschiedenen Sektoren hinweg zusammenarbeiten sollen, aber es ist natürlich erst mal eine Aussage, wenn vielleicht doch eine dieser Säulen wegbrechen würde. Wir haben Kollegen aus dem ITRE auch hier, der maßgeblich für einen Wettbewerbsfähigkeitsfonds da ist. Da würde mich Ihre Perspektive interessieren, inwieweit das neue europäische Bauhaus im künftigen mehrjährigen Finanzrahmen noch so entfaltet werden kann, wenngleich es ja eigentlich erst in einer Startphase ist. Vielen Dank.
Christian Ehler
My question is related to the expert but also to the Commission. If we would put a matrix on the communication on the Bauhaus and how it is placed in the MFF, we would see a dramatic under-financiation of the Bauhaus because in practical terms it's just in the framework program, but a lot of Bauhaus projects are now growing out of the phase of research or where you can integrate it in the research effort. It's built environment, it's investment in communities. So my question is to what extent or where do you should see the shortcomings in terms of the recent placement simply just finance out of the framework program slash the Parliament's proposal is to put it more broadly in the MFF, to integrate it also in other instruments like the housing instruments of the EIB. So that would be my first question.
The second one is simply, I mean, we talk a lot about built environment and we are drawing the historical, let's say, references to the traditional or to the historic Bauhaus.
But I think, I mean, this is not just about built environment. This is about sustainability, it's about water, it's about education, it's about skill, it's about industrial design. So in a way, my question would be, what do you see as efforts which are going beyond the conventional interpretation of built environment, architecture, urban planning? And to what extent there the historical Bauhaus is a needed reference because, I mean, if you see the consequences of the Bauhaus in, let's say, metropolitan building, I mean, Le Corbusier, although not being Bauhaus, is brilliant, the metropolitan suburbs of Europe are disastrous and a direct product of the European Bauhaus.
So what kind of conclusions can be drawn out of the shortcomings of the European Bauhaus if it comes to built environment, suburbs, and the let's say the history of the Bauhaus legacy of the 20th century, which is not just positive? So my question is, is what do you see or how do you see the broader context of the New European Bauhaus beyond built environment and also what are the conclusions if we see the reference to the historic Bauhaus, what we can do better or differently in the 21st century? Thank you.
Hannes Heide
Herzlichen Dank, herzliches Dankeschön an Herrn Dr. Möller für dieses konkrete Beispiel und erfolgreiche Beispiel aus der Peripherie, aus dem ländlichen Raum. Und ich bedanke mich bei beiden Referenten für das Darstellen der Potenziale im Neuen Bauhaus, von denen auch ich überzeugt bin. Aber ich schließe mich meinem Vorredner an. Das, was wir bewältigen wollen, das können wir mit diesen finanziellen Voraussetzungen nicht bewältigen. Und drum ist es unverzichtbar und notwendig, diese Potenziale genau aufzuzeigen und dann auch umzusetzen und etwas zu bewirken.
Weil gegenwärtig sind wir ja bei den Verhandlungen vom MFR und gerade das, was wir vom Rat hören, in einer Situation, dass wir mit der Forderung nach massiven Kürzungen konfrontiert sind. Und letzte Woche gab es ja durchaus auch eine Attacke auf den Kulturbereich und auf Bereiche, die man nicht als Kompetenz der Europäischen Union sieht, wiewohl sie in den europäischen Verträgen durchaus verankert sind.
Und daher ist es so wichtig, aufzuzeigen, welches Potenzial im Neuen Bauhaus ist. Und das eine, was ich mitnehme, es geht da vor allen Dingen darum, Vorhandenes zu beleben, historische Substanz zu beleben und zeitgemäß zu nutzen und auch Bewusstsein zu schaffen. Bewusstsein zu schaffen und in die Köpfe der Menschen zu kommen, wie Bausubstanz eben in Zukunft genutzt werden kann. Und daher ist es auch wichtig, dass wir die Peripherie erreichen. Die Bürgerbeteiligung ist wichtig und ich nehme auch von heute mit: Kleine Projekte können viel bewirken.
Und meine Forderung aus dem Kulturausschuss ist selbstverständlich auch, Kulturstätten stark zu berücksichtigen und auch Begegnungsorte zu schaffen. Und möchte noch einmal wiederholen, dass der Europäische Rechnungshof festgestellt hat, dass die größten sozioökonomischen Effekte in der Belebung, in der Renovierung, Restaurierung von Kulturstätten sich findet. Und diese Räume zu nutzen, das ist ein großes Potenzial. Und ich möchte auch mit einem Beispiel enden. In meinem Bundesland Oberösterreich gab es eine Ausschreibung an alle Gemeinden zur Ortskernbelebung, Leerstände zu beleben.
Und dieses Programm war derart überzeichnet, weil es so viele Einreichungen gab, dass es nicht so wie vorgesehen umgesetzt werden konnte. Und das ist eine große Herausforderung, und ich meine schon, das ist auch eine Frage europäischer Dimension. Herzlichen Dank.
Werner Möller
Okay, thank you for so many questions between contemporary problems and historical references. First of all, I want to say that the Bauhaus, the historical Bauhaus, was a school in the first line. It was a school that started in the period of cultural, structural, and society changes. It was an open field. They did not know what the future really is.
They designed for the future. And I thought this is the same problem the New European Bauhaus has at all, because it started with the question of the Green Deal to find out the way out of coal, and now we are talking about affordable housing on the other side.
So you see all the things has to be connected. I thought this is a very important thing to learn that the things will be connected. And I thought this was also the big chance of our real-world laboratory. We have inside our laboratory six columns where we're working on and we're working on parallel because it's also the question of time, not only the question of money and relations. Because the six columns of our work is building revitalization and spatial transformation.
The second one is materials, circular economy, and digital tools. And think about it in the rural area about digital tools and circular economy with small resources on the rural area. Then participation and co-creation. What does it mean in a rural area? It's totally different from neighborhoods in the metropolitan areas.
But you have to think on both things together. And urban, the fourth one is urban ecology, landscape, and neighborhood development. I show you the image of the open brown coal mining, lignite mining area. It's just in work. So we create also new landscape.
This is not nature. It's a mankind-designed landscape. And we did not know what the future of this landscape is because we did not know the geological backgrounds. And then the last one and this very important one, this is one for my part of view one of the important things is the accompanying and resonance research, documentation, and European networking.
You have to guide the processes what you are doing with research projects and also have a resonance to bring it to the European Union. And then you can see on the one hand what could be as a work as a prototype in the European sense of the project and what is the other tailor-sized part of the project to the local realities because the local realities are always different. And I thought this is a very important thing to look on this macro and micro parts parallel. And I thought this is also a chance of the real-world laboratory to bring the things together and also learn from the smaller projects like you talk about the other Sachsen-Anhalt projects. Then you see real in real world what did the people done with mud as a new material, what do the people in a special situation with an empty school building, there's no use for it, what can do small communities.
And so if you bring this research in a very good way in documentary together and in an exchange, then you can really learn from it and integrate it and build then this environmental thing. I thought this is again a link to the historical Bauhaus because the Bauhaus is okay, for today the Bauhaus if it will be start, it will be start different because they look on the industrial size and methods of the 20th century in the begin, beginning of the century.
We have now different methods. And the question, methods and structure and bring it together to work for the better world. I thought this is the basement of the question of a New European Bauhaus and not the question metropolitan versus rural areas or territory versus urban contexts. I thought we have to bring it together and to learn together from both. And again to the questions, Le Corbusier was not Bauhaus, but it was also part of the modern movement.
And you see also the difference in this time between France and Germany. It's also a political issue and a question of different design methods. The Germans were more rational and the France more generic. So I thought something is also in there between these poles. And it's nice that we have these different poles.
If you look again on the historical Bauhaus to the world famous master houses and you look which of the masters lived there in the master houses and how different they are. Compare Moholy-Nagy with Feininger. Compare Oskar Schlemmer with Georg Muche, Hannes Meyer with Walter Gropius, with Mies van der Rohe.
Hey, it's very diverse. And I thought this is a part of reality to manage this kind of project, process and projects and not looking from milestone to milestone. It's the addition of milestones that give the process. And this was also that I mentioned about it, not too much controlling, more process evaluation parallel in the process. And maybe have some exit strategies or changing strategies inside the funding programs if you have long-term running projects.
This is learning by doing. I thought this is something also in my sense the basic of the New European Bauhaus that's coming from the grassroots idea. Maybe I hope I give this some, not I cannot answer all questions, I hope it was a little bit an overview.
Nicolas Garbi
Thank you. No, so first of all, I'm positively surprised about the questions in the sense that there is a real questioning on about even, no, what does it mean New European Bauhaus finally.
So that's extremely welcome I would say for practitioners because sometimes it doesn't seem that you have a clear direction, again, the clear narrative. So building on what my colleague just mentioned and trying to reply a little bit on your question, I mean, there is again, Bauhaus was a school and possibly that's what we need to take to keep, the spirit of the school. Then this school brought different methods and at the same time there was not just the Bauhaus, there was also a French school, an English one, I mean, as it was mentioned, so diversity was actually the key at that moment. What happened is that then there was a political appropriation of it. So that's the interesting part of it.
So we can have one Le Corbusier, an immense architect, very criticable urban planner.
And this I think it's a possibly a nice example because the architect in its reflection, in its diverse approach towards the other architects in Europe, brought and fed the richness of Europe. But then the political appropriation of those concepts and reflected in territorial policies created a completely different results, the functional approach. So what we should keep, and I'm sure that this was the intention of the Commission when they launched the initiative, was actually this. Let's start to have creative, meaningful, questionable reflections on ground in order to start to feed a cultural movement, a civic movement that actually can really feed the EU values.
So possibly this is what we should keep and maintain. But at the same time, there is this what what the MEP Heide mentioned. I mean, first thing is to cut culture in so and this is something that doesn't go together with what is the ambition of the New European Bauhaus. Because of course, again, it has is an initiative that has first of all a cultural meaning. So if we don't want just to talk about built environment, but we want to talk about landscape, that is again, this production of the interaction between communities and their and their surrounding environment.
And this is fundamentally cultural, is a fundamentally anthropological first of all, and then it creates urban forms, rural landscape forms, etc. But then we cannot separate in the implementation of the Bauhaus, the cultural dimension of it with the mere project implementation of that. And to finalize on Ross's question, unfortunately, I mean, it's the priority will be to stop fragmentation, stop to create new initiatives that actually really for practitioners are just more confusing and to try to let's say respect basic let's say tools that we have in EU, like the code of conduct, for example, like the partnership principle, like the principle of proportionality, subsidiarity. So this I think it's something we can do because to ask for more money, of course, it doesn't make any sense.
So this I think it's something we can do because to ask for more money of course it doesn't make any sense, it's surrealistic in this moment, but to ask for less fragmentation and more synergies, yes. Concretely from all the different let's say funding frameworks that were mentioned, possibly and again going in the same direction of what I was proposing at the beginning, the national regional plans are surely possibly the starting block, the building block of all this, but coupled with tools that have been demonstrated to work extremely well. Let's remember that the JASPERS program of the European Investment Bank, I mean has an amazing level of absorption, they are able to provide this capacity that as we were mentioning before many local governments do not have. And here again when we will need to translate the Industrial Acceleration Act at local level regarding supply chains, there is a big risk of actually increasing inflation because of the innovation cost of the public procurement. We need to act on this.
And who is going to do that?
I mean, small local governments that are already in an enormous struggle and in a political vulnerability that is also very important because of the responsibility that mayors, for example, have. Voilà, we need to act there. So we don't need to invent something new, no, but maybe to identify the right framework again, the national, regional plans coupled with the right blending and advisory tools and ensuring capacity. And where there is no capacity at individual level, we need to go for a territorial approach again, sharing the capacity among the different small, medium municipality, doing this at cross-border level. We already have amazing, enormous quantity of examples.
It's just a need really to recover them and to give them the tools, not just acknowledge their success through narrative, but really now empowering, empowering them. Yes, thank you.
Dragoş Benea
Now I give the floor for the last intervention to Ms. Elena Montani, head of the New European Bauhaus unit at the Joint Research Centre.
Elena Montani
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and dear honorable members, many thanks first of all for this very useful debate and thanks a lot to the speakers also for the inspiring interventions which we will also take home in the Commission. I would like to start by picturing what we have currently in the MFF from 21 to 27, where the NEB is financed through several funding programs: Horizon Europe, LIFE, Digital Europe, Erasmus+, cohesion policy. Initially, the NEB was mainstreamed as follows: R&I activities were spread over out of many different components of the current Horizon Europe program, scale-up and deployment activities were mainstreamed across other EU programs, and this did not allow for clarity and predictability for member states and stakeholders and prevented a full integrated approach as advocated by the NEB. This is why, based on a participatory process, the NEB facility was established for the years 25 to 27 with a hook under Horizon Europe. The NEB facility consists of two components: there is a research and innovation component which is enshrined in Horizon Europe and aims at the research, development, and demonstration of novel solutions.
It has an indicative budget of around 120 million per year from Horizon Europe for the period 25 to 27. A rollout component is aiming to implement and scaling up NEB solutions, success stories and innovations. It is expected to also leverage the same amount, 120 million per year, from different EU programs and national and private funding for the period 25 to 27. In terms of governance, the R&I component has its own work program which is published and adopted together as part of the Horizon Europe work program, while the rollout component is developed through ad hoc interventions in line with the various programs' objectives. 25 was the first year of the NEB facility calls under Horizon Europe.
As also pointed out by my colleague, it is very early to do a proper evaluation. Projects are just starting, but we can already report that the participation figures of the first Horizon Europe call are very promising and demonstrate the wide interest in the NEB facility. Let me mention a few figures.
We had 367 proposals submitted by 4,856 participants. In terms of type of organizations, we have a very diverse range of actors: 27% from higher and secondary education, 24% from private sector including one quarter more or less of SMEs, 15% from public bodies, 12% from research institutions and the rest from other types of participants. Country participation was also quite distributed as well. We have 85% of applicants coming from the Member States and we can see also a mirroring of the Member States' activities where the NEB is more, where there is more engagement on the NEB. 15% comes from associated countries, 1% from third countries, and it's interesting to see that the call attracted applicants also from accession countries as well as the Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceania.
The 2026 NEB Facility call under Horizon Europe is currently open. It will be open until the 1st of December. The call covers three destinations. The first aims to connect the green transition with social inclusion and local democracy.
The second aims to support circular and regenerative approaches for the built environment. And the third aims to support innovative funding and new business models for the transformation of neighborhoods. We obviously encourage you to also promote the call in your networks. For the next MFF, the Commission proposed to mirror a similar approach to the current one to allow the support to the NEB to both the R&I and the rollout component through several funding programs including Horizon Europe, the national and regional partnership plans and the European Competitiveness Fund, Erasmus+ according to also their and in line with their objectives. This would allow to support the objectives and priorities that were highlighted by the Commission after extensive consultation with stakeholders in the Commission communication adopted in December 25 as part of the housing package and in particular to support NEB initiatives from research to scale up and at different levels of governance.
As we see more and more enthusiasm and interest to engage in the regeneration of neighborhoods according to the NEB values and principles, we aim to support researchers, innovators, practitioners and authorities in their journeys. And in particular, I would like to highlight three work streams which are ongoing and which are also replying to some of your comments and questions. First, we aim to provide consolidated knowledge. We aim to collect all good practices and innovations in a single NEB knowledge portal and disseminate solutions for other communities and neighborhoods with similar challenges in Europe and beyond. This work will also entail the development of indicators and guidance to assess the impact of community-led initiatives that combine sustainability, inclusion and quality.
Second, we aim to support skills and capacity building. This was also touched in some of your interventions. To train the next generation of builders, architects and designers and to provide workers, authorities and businesses with the right skills, including digital skills, needed for the transformation of the built environment.
And third, we aim to support business development, in particular small actors who will receive targeted assistance to develop ideas, promote innovations and accelerate access to market, in particular through an advisory funding hub. As requested by the Parliament, the European Commission is also developing a NEB label that will allow us to recognize and support NEB-aligned practices and projects, including through business development and matchmaking with potential investors. An important element for implementing the scaling up of the NEB is the NEB Academy, which will become the core infrastructure of the NEB to connect knowledge, skills and innovations. The Academy aims to ensure that results from the NEB projects are collected, translated into high-quality trainings and materialized in tangible, meaningful projects in neighborhoods across Europe. One particular point of attention the Commission is aware of, as also discussed today, is how to ensure support to grassroots initiatives and small municipalities in rural areas with both funding support and capacity building.
This is also what is at the origin of the NEB boost for small municipalities originated by the Parliament, which proved to be a successful and appreciated format. The Commission is currently exploring ways to ensure that support to small actors can continue, but of course we also need to wait for the final stage of the negotiations on the MFF, but we would like, of course, to mobilize not only public funding, but also private funding.
Let me thank again the Parliament for its continued support to the NEB. We are really looking forward to working together in the future months and years for scaling up the NEB together.
Dragoş Benea
Thank you. So we are reaching the end of this hearing and I would like to thank you all, including our experts, guest speakers and members for the valuable contributions and fruitful discussion we have had today. It has certainly provided us with useful insights which we are going to translate into our legislative work in the months to come. I would also like to thank the interpreters and wish you all a good afternoon. Thank you so much.
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