The work of the EU Affairs Unit
The EU Affairs unit (based within the Climate Action & Sustainability section) is Cork City Council’s focal point and sounding-board on all matters EU-related.
With a view to both promoting a general culture of openness towards what European programming can offer, if prioritised, and to fostering active interest in the pursuit of particular opportunities, the service informs, guides and supports our access to, and thereby seeks to maximise the quality of our engagement in, such initiatives. This is intended to enhance our prospects of success in both securing EU assistance and of the associated activities purposefully delivering.
The work involves a mix of identifying and sizing up specific published ‘calls for proposals’ in good time; interpreting how their high-level EU policy agendas might be related to the functions of the organisation and to the city’s local context; promoting them for consideration among the appropriate colleagues (including via joined-up cross-Directorate thinking and integrated policy approaches); offering technical guidance and clarification on individual programmes’ compliance rules; and assisting with external connections and relationship-building with potential partners and local stakeholders.
Given the multi-annual commitments involved in EU activities, it is crucial that their ambitions should provide identifiable added value (beyond purely any award of funding as a welcome enabler) at proposal stage and will prove manageable to deliver once approved. With a view to the City Council arriving at a rounded assessment as to the merits of being part of a given bid, the unit provides assistance towards the prior submission of a formal internal Business Case, clearly setting out how an eventual project would pan out locally in terms of factors such as expected beneficial impacts; alignment with the organisation’s strategic policy objectives; planned resourcing arrangements and use of funding.
Where greenlighted bids are subsequently approved at EU level as projects, the unit is available to assist our project managers with the establishment of necessary processes and procedures and, in linking the project with the organisation at large, to ensure that internal governance arrangements are adhered to and that implementation stays on-track; to support the promotion and use of learning and results among other colleagues; and to assist with financial reporting where a grant has been secured.
In some cases, subject to resourcing, the unit may also be in a position to offer supplementary day-to-day project management capacity to Directorates pursuing EU opportunities – thereby enhancing organisational agility and further lowering the bar on engagement in useful projects.
Aside from project structures, the unit also enables ad hoc cooperation with other cities and regions including via a number of thematic networks of interest at European level where the City Council maintains a membership, e.g. ICLEI Europe (local governments for sustainability).
In this video, EU Affairs Co-ordinator, Ronan Gingles, introduces the work of the unit.
Interested in collaborating with Cork City Council on an EU project? Contact ronan_gingles@corkcity.ie / corina_hanrahan@corkcity.ie / sorcha_tobin@corkcity.ie