The 3rd Committee of the Regions (CoR) Monitoring Report on Europe 2020  shows that  widespread awareness and support for Europe 2020 are not enough to meet the ambitious targets of Europe's growth strategy. There is an urgent need to commit more financial resources and to better engage local and regional authorities in the process. The CoR report shows that: ' despite growing levels of consultation with bodies representing local and regional authorities (LRAs), the shaping of Europe 2020 National Reform Programmes are still being decided by national governments. Europe 2020, the report stresses, is therefore failing to benefit from the potential that a coordinated approach between the different levels of governance could bring in delivering its objectives'.

Findings of the report:

• EU local and regional authorities are increasingly familiar with Europe 2020;
• the Europe 2020 goals and targets set at country level are seen by a majority of respondents as appropriate to their territories and the flagship initiatives have even encouraged local and regional authorities to address their own specific needs by setting more ambitious goals in several policy fields;
• nevertheless, cities and regions still need to do more to coordinate and integrate their policies with those of other tiers of government;
• multilevel coordination and governance is still far from widespread and the Europe 2020 National reform programmes are still decided mainly by national governments;
• the economic crisis and austerity measures to stabilise the euro area are taking a heavy toll on public budgets at the national and local levels.

The full press release is available here. The report is available here.