It gives me particular satisfaction to address this Founding Congress of the new Organisation of Cities and Local Governments. I want to welcome all the participants, especially the presidents of the organisations that convened the congress: Mercedes Bresso (President of the World Federation of United Cities) and Alan Lloyd (President of the International Union of Local Authorities).

The way to the unification of the two organisations, the WFUC and the IULA, was prepared with perseverance and vision by various leaders, amongst whom, as former Mayor of Lisbon and President of the WFUC, I am proud to include myself. I recall some of the distinguished figures who, at the time, were also involved in this endeavour: Pierre Mauroy, Pasqual Maragall, Jaime Ravinet and Riccardo Triglia.

The new organisation will achieve the objective of establishing a strong, credible and responsible interlocutor to work for the municipal authorities in their relations with the international community, and particularly the United Nations.

It was desirable for this to happen, and the way our societies are moving towards globalisation undoubtedly made it necessary. In addition, the local authorities, in their own daily activities, have accumulated significant experience in the planning and management of territories, and in the mobilisation and application of strategic resources for development. That experience certainly qualifies them to be essential partners in the international dialogue. The work they do every day makes them prime actors in international cooperation.

The organisation emerging from this congress will stimulate and consolidate networking between cities, and this is an appropriate way of confronting some of the risks of globalisation. Among these risks there is, as we know, that of the concentration of resources and decision-making capacity in restricted geographical areas, to the detriment of other more peripheral areas.

The fact is that this unequal distribution of resources is doubly prejudicial: the excessive concentration in central areas creates ineconomies of scale, with harmful effects, especially from the environmental standpoint. On the other hand, from the point of view of the peripheries, it creates obstacles to the good use of existing resources, with serious consequences in terms of equal opportunities for the populations and their organisations.

It is therefore important to show determination and strategic vision in counteracting, through networking, the worldwide trend towards increasing the asymmetries of development.

Networking will also make it possible, I believe, to check another worldwide trend, that towards excessive competition between regions and cities. In an economy marked by the growing mobility of factors, this competition sometimes becomes fierce, obliging regions to enter into disputes over resources of all kinds. As the conditions for competitiveness are different, the dispute results in gains for a restricted number of cities and losses for an increasing number.

I believe that these considerations justify placing the values of territorial equity and spatial justice at the centre of the political agenda for international dialogue and cooperation, a dialogue in which local authorities are important protagonists.

Cohesion and territorial equity cannot be achieved by one actor alone, but will result from a combination of very diverse actors - public, associative and private. It is a collective endeavour, aimed at balancing the present pattern of spatial distribution of capacities and powers of decision.

Actors in networks and international cooperation therefore represent essential elements in this process of collectively building spaces around a fairer, more shared and more supportive spatial vision.

Ladies and gentlemen, members of the congress

I am, by background, conviction and involvement, a municipalist. A defender of the potential of local authorities for strengthening territories and, as we now say, an essential component of their governability. The great advantage of municipalism is that it is close to people, but local government must not succumb to the temptation of localism.

There is a political slogan that suits the situation well: act locally, think globally. Here again, globalisation can be thought of as a challenge or, in other words, as an opportunity.
The contemporary city has spread all over the territory and become diffuse. There is more and more commuting, citizens are from where they live and not from where they work, where they spend most of their time. The city boundary has lost its clarity, and been replaced by a wider space of contacts, a diversified flow of goods and people.

The municipality is not an island, but part of an archipelago. Its governability has to take this condition into account, and use it as a stimulus and a horizon.

This means that citizenship is enacted at various levels, and that an authority close to its citizens has to remember that citizens go about their daily business, direct their expectations and make their choices in a territory made up of various places. The local authority must interrelate with other powers, it must be translocal.

In this global context, changes in the city make international platforms of perception and interrelationship, such as the one that is coming into being here today, more necessary. The changes we are experiencing have made reality more complex, so that the terms of reference that we use to understand their effects have to be more precise, and the planning and management instruments more demanding. This is why, I repeat, networking becomes so essential.

Members of the congress

I wanted to share with you these two brief considerations about the challenges of globalisation for our cities and local authorities: territorial cohesion and translocal citizenship.