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London deputy mayor
resigns in disgrace
23 June 2009: The administration of London mayor Boris Johnson has been plunged into disarray following the resignation of another deputy mayor. Ian Clement, the deputy mayor for government and external relations, resigned following weeks of speculation and accusations over his misuse of a corporate credit card. It was alleged that the deputy mayor used the card to pay for lunches with political allies, personal expenditure and even trips abroad. Mr Clement is the third deputy mayor to resign from the administration since the Conservative mayor was elected one year ago.

The row is likely to be all the more controversial as a result of the drawn-out scandal involving British parliamentarians’ expenses, which still rumbles on after months of resignations and political careers in tatters. Clement, a former leader of Bexley council in London who gave up his elected role to serve under Johnson, is alleged to charged flight upgrades to the Beijing Olympics and even a lavish £700 meal with a New York City deputy mayor to the authority’s card.

The Conservative administration’s confusing appointment of ‘deputy mayors’ (as a single deputy mayor exists in law as Johnson’s designated deputy) has been roundly criticised since his term began. In other comparable city governments, senior officials are often known as ‘vice mayors’. Johnson was first hit by the resignation of senior aide James McGrath, who quit in June 2008 over alleged racist comments made to a journalist, followed by deputy mayor Ray Lewis a month later, who was forced out over allegations of fabricating past roles on his CV. ‘First Deputy Mayor’ Tim Parker, a business leader brought in by Johnson to run the Greater London Authority management structure, later quit over a City Hall power struggle with other aides.

In accepting his resignation, Johnson thanked Mr Clement for his hard work and paid tribute to his work on London’s first City Charter. While Johnson may quietly hope that Clement’s resignation draws a line under the affair, opposition figures on the London Assembly have vowed to investigate the matter further in order to ascertain how he was able to charge such expenditure to the authority undetected for so long.

Report backs amnesty
for illegal immigrants
London, 17 June 2009: Figures published by the Mayor of London this week claim that a one-off amnesty of irregular undocumented migrants working in the British capital could benefit the economy to tune of £3bn and yield a further £846m in additional tax revenue. The study, undertaken by the London School of Economics (LSE), claims there could be almost 0.5m such workers in London, equivalent to the population of two of its 32 boroughs. The move is likely to create friction between the Conservative mayor and the national party, which opposes such an amnesty and generally takes a strong line on immigration issues.

The report follows a commitment by the mayor to explore how such an amnesty could benefit the capital’s economy and was supported by the London Assembly last year. Welcoming the report, London mayor Boris Johnson said: “This new report has introduced some long overdue facts, hard evidence and academic rigour into a debate which has far too often been dominated by myth, anecdote and hearsay.” He added: “The study also demolishes the argument that an amnesty would inevitably lead to increased migration to the UK and identifies effective border controls as the vital factor in controlling and deterring illegal immigration.”

The report claims that the status quo is not only ineffective but also needlessly costly. Only 111,265 illegal immigrants have been deported in 10 years since 1998. If deportations continued at these levels it then would take more than 50 years to deport the estimated 618,000 illegal immigrants in the UK. The National Audit Office estimated the cost of deporting each irregular migrant is £11,000. To deport all those currently in Britain could therefore cost the taxpayer up to £4.7billion.

Siemens to study cities’
environmental progress
Munich, 16 June 2009: Siemens, Germany’s largest industrial company, is currently preparing the European Green City Index. The research, which is carried out in cooperation with the London-based Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), involves 30 cities. The new study aims to determine the extent to which the cities’ environmentally compatible infrastructures – in the areas of energy supplies and building, traffic and water systems, for example – have already been developed or can be further developed.

In addition, the study will present best practices in climate protection and sustainability from which other cities can learn. Barbara Kux, the company’s Chief Sustainability Officer, told City Mayors: “This is just one of the ways in which our company is helping major European cities become eco-friendlier.” The study’s findings will be published before the end of 2009.

Meanwhile, the City of Munich has received the German government’s award for Innovative and exemplary strategies for the implementation of municipal climate protection. One of nine municipalities to be so honoured, the city was signalled out for its Munich for Climate Protection Alliance, which was established in 2007. One of the alliance’s partners was Siemens.

Inward investment in
London dropped by 13%
London, 4 June 2009: Foreign direct investment (FDI) in London fell by 13 per cent in 2008. However, the UK capital retained its position as the most attractive European city for inward investment. The city attracted 262 projects, with Paris coming in second with 222 projects and Madrid third on 80. The research, carried out by Ernst & Young, uncovered that investors had greater confidence in the ability of cities with international qualities – or global cities – to emerge from the current situation than in the recovery capacity of their second-tier rivals.

The research also revealed that the primacy of long-established centres in the developed world – including Europe’s capitals – is being challenged by emerging Asian cities such as Shanghai and Bangalore and by regional cities acquiring international expertise. When business leaders were asked where the next Google or Microsoft would emerge, Shanghai and Mumbai were seen as the more credible alternatives than New York City and Silicon Valley, or London.

Retaining its ranking as the most attractive European location for FDI, the UK attracted 686 investment projects in 2008, four per cent less than in 2007. The 686 investments created some 20,000 jobs (16% fewer jobs than 2007).

Germany’s 28 per cent increase in inward investment was fuelled by new regional headquarters for German or Eastern European markets and by industrial demand for business services, software as well as wind and solar energy technology.

Ireland, although bruised by plans to shift manufacturing jobs to more cost-competitive countries, had a 35 per cent increase in project numbers as British and US companies continued to invest.

According to Ernst & Young, the recession will impact European FDI even more in 2009. Provisional data from the first quarter already indicates an eight per cent drop in project announcements compared with the first quarter of 2008.  For the rest of the year, 53 per cent of business leaders interviewed in the study said they had no green field or expansion plans for 2009.

British expenses scandal
dominates political debate
London. 23 May 2009: Local elections will take place in England on 7 June this year, alongside those for the European Parliament. Elections will be held for all 27 county councils in England, as well as a handful of urban unitary authorities. Three of England’s 11 directly elected mayors will also be elected, while the elected mayor system in Stoke on Trent will be abolished and replaced with an indirectly elected leader on the same day. Following the scandal over British parliamentarians’ profligate expenses claims, voters are likely to turn against the two main parties amid a reported rise in the popularity of minor parties. Full article

Dublin will have directly
elected mayor next year
Dublin, 15 May 2009: Dublin will have a directly elected mayor next year for the first time since the foundation Ireland. The country’s minister for the environment John Gormley said that 2010 would see the direct election by the people of the Dublin region of a highly visible and accountable mayor who will have the authority and powers to deliver real leadership for the city and region. “The mayor’s leadership will derive from a suite of substantial powers across the functions of local government. I also believe that by virtue of the breadth of the mayor’s democratic mandate, he or she will be an extremely strong political voice speaking on behalf of Dubliners in local, regional and national politics,” he added.

According to the minister, the Mayor of Dublin will have powers similar to those of the London mayor. He or she will be chair of the Dublin Transport Authority with a direct role in the development of transport strategy in the Irish capital. Gormley added that the mayor would oversee the implementation by the four Dublin local authorities of agreed regional strategies. “The mayor will also be responsible for bringing key public and private sector partners together to promote a dynamic and enterprising city region.”

CEMR furious about
British twinning story
London, 15 May 2009: Not satisfied with unravelling the financial shenanigans of Britain’s parliamentarians, The Daily Telegraph newspaper has also started a spat with the Council of European Municipalities and Regions (CEMR). In an article the paper wrote that Wallingford, a small town in Oxfordshire, wanted to end a twinning arrangement with Luxeuil-les-Bains, an equally small town in France, near the Swiss border. The paper claimed that the mayor of Wallingford, Alec Hayton, wanted to ‘un-twin’ because “the relationship was clinically dead” only to be told by the CEMR there was no mechanism for it.

According to The Daily Telegraph, Wallingford sends out twin letters and Christmas cards, but gets nothing in return. “So it complained to the Brussels-based body responsible for twinning, the CEMR, only to be told there was no mechanism for un-twinning,” the paper wrote. The Telegraph, which is not known for its fondness of European institutions, also claimed that the CEMR had an annual twinning budget of 10 million euro.

The newspaper went on to criticise the CEMR website www.twinning.org, which it described as Europe at its most wastefully bureaucratic: “Cities across the EU advertise for partners, as if on an upmarket dating site: Estonian town with a population of 20,000 seeks similar in Greece or Portugal to forge sporting and cultural links."

The Telegraph story, which also made it into The Wall Street Journal and The Guardian, continued to ridicule town twinning in general: “In the early days of twinning, such international goodwill initiatives answered needs that were genuine and honourable. Two of the first cities to twin were Coventry and Dresden, communities that had been devastated in wartime bombing raids and wanted to build a better Europe from the rubble. Nowadays, when you hear that city A has twinned with city B, you get a whiff of junket.”

“Coventry, once so high-minded, has become the Don Juan of the twinning world, getting into bed with more than 20 foreign cities, some as far afield as Australia. The special relationship which Coventry enjoyed with Dresden has been devalued by a plethora of relationships that are not special, just opportunistic.”

Needless to say the CEMR was not amused. The organisation said that no one at its Brussels headoffice was never contacted by the mayor of Wallingford. Jeremy Smith, the organisation’s general secretary, told journalists that he spoke to the mayor who “confirmed that he had never spoken to anyone at the CEMR.” In a press release the CEMR added that un-twinning was indeed possible. “It only takes a local council's decision to put an end to it. This is stated on CEMR's town twinning website available in 23 languages,” the press release explained.

Jeremy Smith also stressed that his organisation had never been responsible for disbursing over 10 million euros a year on twinning grants. “This is the task of the European Commission. We do not disburse even one cent,” he said.

In an as yet unpublished letter to The Daily Telegraph, Smith concludes: “Alas, your coverage of this story – not least its misleading clichés about “bloated quangos” and “gravy trains” - shows once again that, in some quarters, old prejudices about Europe and twinning die hard.”

German city pays towards
the costs of a new bicycle
Mannheim, 10 May 2009: Inspired by the German government’s 2500-euro offer to people exchanging their old bangers for more environmentally friendly cars, the Rhine city of Mannheim has introduced a scheme to encourage citizens to swap their old bicycles for new ones. Originally the city said the first 100 people who traded in their old bikes would receive 50 euros. However, the scheme has proved so popular that it has now been extended until the end of May.

The programme is a joint initiative between Mannheim City Hall and Biotopia, an organisation that provides job training for the unemployed and disadvantaged youth. The old bikes, which have to be in more or less useable condition, will be collected by Biotopia and refurbished. The money for the 50-euro bonus comes out of the Mannheim municipal budget.

A spokesman for Mannheim’s Social Democrat mayor Peter Kurz explained that the city hoped the scheme would encourage residents to use their bikes instead of their cars. “We also want to support local business during the current economic crisis,” he added. The response to the city’s initiative has been such that exemptions had to be introduced. Children’s, mountain and racing bikes are no longer eligible for the 50-euro payment.

Berlin mayor under pressure
to fire controversial senator
Berlin, 8 May 2009: After Berlin’s worst May Day riots for many years, Mayor Klaus Wowereit is urged to fire his interior senator Erhard Körting, the man responsible for law and order in the city. Parliamentarians, from both in the Berlin Senate and Germany’s national parliament, accused Körting of inadequate preparations after the senator admitted that, with hindsight, the police should have dealt differently with the demonstrations on 1 May. To make matters worse, the senator, referring to copycat rioters, compared the situation to sex crimes: “Once the woman is naked and has been raped it’s easier for others to join in.”

The senator’s remark caused outrage among politicians from all parties and led to the defection of Social Democrat councillor Canan Bayram to the opposition Green Party, leaving Mayor Wowereit with a wafer-thin majority of ‘one’. Bayram told reporters that she could not be part of a group where such a remark was not reprimanded. She also demanded a formal apology from the interior senator.

Three days before 1 May, Körting was also accused of cowardice following his hasty retreat from an interview, which took place in a restaurant. The journalist conducting the interview said the senator feared he was spotted by a small group of left-wing radicals. He added Körting suddenly stood up and claimed he had to leave, even refusing to continue the interview at a different venue. The manager of the restaurant told reporters afterwards that it was deplorable that the man responsible for law and order appeared to be fleeing from a few would-be protestors.

Rome mayor to act
as G8 go-between
Rome, 6 May 2009: Rome’s mayor Gianni Alemanno has urged civil society leaders gathered in the capital to be bold in their demands on G8 leaders ahead of this year’s summit. Speaking to the Civil G8 Dialogue conference of NGO delegates from across the world, Alemanno promised to try and organise a meeting between development organisations and world leaders when the summit convenes in Italy in July. Alemanno told delegates that it was important that their demands framed ahead of the summit at the now traditional gathering were aimed at "providing answers to the current crisis that are not just based on market and development initiatives but also on solidarity and environmental protection".

The Rome conference of 258 delegates raised soaring food prices as the cornerstone of their concerns in a communiqué to be presented to the G8 leaders, noting a rise of 85 per cent last year. The conference also called on the world’s biggest economies to go further in tackling the financial crisis, as well as climate change. Alemanno promised to press Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, the current senior G8 leader, to organise a meeting between the heads of government and the civil society organisations to hear their demands. Berlusconi recently announced the move of July summit from the island of La Maddelena to the earthquake-hit region of Abruzzo.

The move follows bad press for the Rome mayor, who was engaged in a diplomatic spat with Paris mayor Bertrand Delanoë late last month. Delanoë, addressing a conference of Italy’s opposition Democratic Party, made references to alleged support for Alemmano among neo-fascists, which saw the country’s foreign ministry protest to the French government over the remarks.

London rally in support
of irregular immigrants
London, 5 May 2009: London’s religious heads, union chiefs and community leaders held a rally in central London during the public holiday to demand a one-off amnesty for undocumented migrant workers. The Strangers into Citizens campaign estimate that 450,000 migrants would benefit from the move, which would also have the benefit of generating billions of extra tax revenue. The rally's organisers cite support for such a move in the US by both Barack Obama and John McCain during last year’s presidential election as evidence of its growing mainstream acceptance.

Despite its supporters presenting the amnesty as a humanitarian initiative, anti-immigration groups such as Migration Watch, the media and even government ministers have attacked the idea as "unworkable" and encouraging further illegal immigration. Organisers however, point to Spain, where a one-off regularisation of its 700,000 irregular migrants actually curbed illegal immigration to the country, they argue.

The rally, held in central London’s Trafalgar Square, heard from an array of religious heads, trade union chiefs and community group leaders, as well as London Assembly Chair Darren Johnson. London mayor Boris Johnson, who has backed calls for an amnesty since his election a year ago this month, was not able to attend but sent his support in advance.

A London School of Economics study commissioned by the mayor earlier this year, revealed that between up to 75 per cent of Britain’s irregular migrants live in London. The UK government remains hostile to the proposal however, wary of some sections of the conservative press, with immigration minister Phil Woolas declaring the amnesty to be “inherently unfair” and even going so far as to brand Boris Johnson a “naïve nincompoop” over his support for it.

London mayor and borough
leaders launch city charter
1 May 2009: London’s city leaders have agreed what is billed as a “groundbreaking” first ever City Charter for London. The document, drawn up by the Mayor of London Boris Johnson and the 33 local council leaders in the capital, commits the signatories to work more closely together on behalf of Londoners in order to improve public services and provide better value for money. Launching the charter, Mayor Johnson said: “For far too long relations between City Hall and the boroughs have been confrontational rather than constructive, hindering the development of our great city.”

The charter sets out the respective roles of the Greater London Authority (GLA), led by the mayor, and the 32 London Boroughs and the City of London Corporation. Though not a legal document, it outlines where the mayor has precedence and where the boroughs have input to the work of the GLA. It also establishes a Congress of Leaders drawn from the 33 local councils’ leaderships (29 council leaders, three elected mayors and the chairman of the City of London’s policy committee), chaired by the Mayor of London, to oversee the charter’s operation and the agreed work undertaken through it. The charter prioritises cooperation around transport improvement, promoting employment, responding to climate change and tackling youth violence.  More controversially, it also calls for council leaders to be given the power to appoint local area police chiefs, which is likely to be strongly opposed by the Metropolitan Police.

The City Charter for London was launched by the mayor and the chairman of London Councils, Cllr Merrick Cockell, in a ceremony at London City Hall. Johnson added: “The City Charter marks a new era in the relationship between the City Hall and the capital’s boroughs to get a better deal for Londoners and make our city safer, greener and more prosperous.” Relations between the city government and the London Boroughs have often been parlous at times. In the 1980s, pressure from Conservative-led London Boroughs led to Margaret Thatcher’s government abolishing the Greater London Council of Ken Livingstone (1981-1986), while under Livingstone’s mayoralty (2000-2008), the two sides often clashed over planning issues.

Nicolas Sarkozy unveils
plans for a Greater Paris
Paris, 30 April 2009: French president Nicolas Sarkozy has unveiled his administration’s plans for a Greater Paris, with 10 rival blueprints put forward by pre-eminent architects. The plans, designed to overhaul a city beset by urban strife in recent years, are being overseen by former Air France chief Christian Blanc, now minister for the capital. Plans include an urban corridor along the Seine to the English Channel and an eco-city. Critics however argue that the national government lacks the authority and resources to effect such change.

Few disagree that the Paris cityscape requires rapid alteration and that the current layout acts as a barrier to development, not least the infamous red belt. Sarkozy, a former mayor of the affluent Neuilly district, is thought to favour a 20bn euro circular underground railway to link together both new developments and neglected suburbs, which saw widespread riots in 2005. However, the current governance arrangements for the capital, with the city council disconnected from the suburbs in the wider Paris region, lack coherence. Both Sarkozy and planning experts favour the merger of existing institutions, such as the city council and the
Île-de-France region. One solution floated is that of a Paris Metro, like other urban communities in France.

Even members of Sarkozy’s own UMP party are thought to be against the plans for a Paris Metro urban area however. Meanwhile, Sarkozy’s own plans for the capital, which suffered a major setback with the re-election of Socialist Bertrand Delanoë in 2008, have been further complicated by rumours of a bid for the mayoralty by former high-flying minister Rachida Dati. The scandal-prone Dati, who was elected mayor of the 7th arrondissement last year, has told confidants that she plans to run for Paris mayor in 2013. Dati was recently demoted by Sarkozy when he appointed her to a safe position on the UMP list for the European Parliament this June, though she is now said to view this, as well as her municipal career, as preparation for a mayoral run.

Landslide for pro-Kremlin
candidate in Olympic city
Moscow, 27 April 2009: Russian election officials say the acting mayor of Sochi, the host city of the 2014 Winter Olympics, has been elected to the post by an apparent overwhelming margin. With 80 percent of the votes counted, officials say Kremlin-backed Mayor Anatoly Pakhamov won more than 76 per cent of Sunday's mayoral vote. The closest opposition candidate, Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov, was a distant second with 13 per cent and communist Yuri Dzaganiya was far behind in third place.

Nemtsov accused authorities of suppressing the opposition's campaign by limiting media access. Unidentified assailants threw chemicals in his face outside his election headquarters last month. He was not seriously hurt. "We are preparing lawsuits about the facts of mass falsifications during these elections, demanding the annulment of the results of the elections, because they were not actually elections but a massive fraud," Nemtsov said.

Some opposition members also say they are suspicious of the large number of voters who cast ballots early. The new mayor of Sochi will play a major part in getting the city ready for the 2014 Olympic games. But Russian authorities have slashed the federal construction budget for Sochi because of the global economic crisis and a lack of contractor bids. Voter turnout was about 38 per cent. (Report by VoA News)