European Cities Conferences

At the European Cities Conference with the title "Interconnected Help", held on 24 and 25 October 2019, the City of Vienna and its international partners from Eurocomm-PR's network exchanged views on the important cooperation between professional and voluntary emergency services and the city administration. Other key topics included measures to raise awareness of the potential dangers of everyday life and the right behaviour in emergency situations, as well as the invaluable importance of volunteers for society. At the end of the conference, a delegation composed of representatives from other partnering cities across Europe visited the "Vienna Safety Festival" in front of Vienna City Hall. The festival represents the largest exhibition on safety and public health in Austria with participation from "Die Helfer Wiens" (The Helpers of Vienna) and all Viennese emergency services. Once again the main focus lied on the mutual exchange of knowledge between key actors at home and abroad.

What will the European municipalities look like in the year 2030? In the context of the European Cities Conference on June 18th and 19th 2019, the City of Vienna wanted to look into the future with its partners of the Eurocomm-PR network and speak about essential aspects of digitisation.

The implementation of the sustainable development goals of the United Nations (UN) on a local and a communal level – that was the topic of the European Cities Conference from October 9th to 10th in Vienna. The topics ranged from UN organisations in Vienna to the European Commission to the numerous representatives from the Central and Southeast European dialogue cities. The first conference day was dedicated to building bridges between the participating cities and the United Nations headquarters in Vienna, followed by a visit to the UNO headquarters. Additionally the presented SDG projects of the UN organisations that are resident in Vienna rounded off the understanding for the UNO and the sustainability agenda. How the goals will affect a sustainable development of the cities and which meaning these goals will hold for the future of the cities was discussed on the second conference day. The conference was organised by the City of Vienna and its Eurocomm-PR cities network with support of the United Nations in Vienna.

At the beginning of March 2018, the European Cities Conference series invited the partner cities of the Eurocomm-PR network to Vienna – the topic was data protection. In the Wappensaal (coat of arms hall) of the Viennese town hall a general idea about the topic with discussions about technological solutions to the law enforcement of data protection was offered on the first day. Concrete examples about the business location Vienna, as well as open data initiatives from the Western Balkans were presented. The workshop on the second day triggered a very detailed and constructive discussion about the technological and organisational implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation in the individual cities and regional authorities, and the qualification of the employees was a central topic.

Currently everyone is talking about "shared economy". How can public administrations and municipalities play a part in this topic, which advantages and challenges need to be considered? The ECC focuses on this topic on March 7th and 8th.