Third meeting of the Security in Public Spaces Partnership, 6-7 June 2019, Florence-Regione Toscana

On 6-7 June 2019, the Partnership for Security in Public Spaces held its third meeting in Florence, hosted by the Tuscany Region that is a member of the Partnership.

The Tuscany Region representative opened the meeting congratulating the Partnership on the Orientation Paper that had been presented on 13 and 14 June 2019 at the Informal Ministerial Meeting in Bucharest, as part of the Romanian Presidency of the European Union. 

After having succeeded in setting out the Partnership’s overall goals and ways of working in the Orientation Paper, this meeting’s main objective was to start working towards the definition of Actions. The Coordinators – the City of Nice, the City of Madrid, and the European Forum for Urban Security (Efus) – emphasised the need for a participatory approach in Action definition, and for ownership by Partners.  

In a Teaser Session, Partners collected potential Actions – which resulted in a long list of Actions on day 2 of the meeting. 

The Croatian Ministry of Construction and Physical Planning presented a survey that aimed to identify security needs at the local level in the three priority areas defined by the Partnership – Urban planning and design, Technology for smart and secure cities, and Managing security and sharing public space. The initiative was highly appreciated by the Partnership in light of the importance to involve national and regional level actors. Other countries were invited to repeat the exercise.

The European Investment Bank contributed by presenting funding opportunities to urban areas that can include security-related investments as well. 

A site visit in Prato at the [chì-na] cultural association –  with presentations of projects such as Pop Up and the “White Paper on the Regional Policies of Urban Security” – concluded the first day.

Tuscany’s Regional Minister Vittorio Bugli opened the second meeting day and stressed the wish by Regione Toscana to share and compare experiences with other realities, practices and policies across Europe. 

Partners went on to discuss the Action long list in working group sessions. 

The next Partnership meeting will take place back to back with the Partnership’s workshop at the European Week of Regions and Cities in Brussels, on 9 October 2019.