European Diary Jamie SmythIt's a typical day at the Maison des Potes community centre in Meinau, Strasbourg. A few children are playing outside in the yard while two teenagers type up their CVs on the computer in the corner of the room.
Project co-ordinator Jean-Luc Kaneb is busy organising activities for the young people who visit the centre daily.
"About 1,600 people have come to the centre to search for information to help them find jobs this year," he says. "We have also set up a network of entrepreneurs in Strasbourg . . . to offer young people summer jobs and give advice."
Youth unemployment is a problem throughout France, but in poor suburbs such as Meinau it is a blight affecting a third of residents. For many young people, the Maison des Potes project is their best hope of breaking a cycle of unemployment and poverty. It is also a place where they can meet, get off the streets and stay out of trouble.
Maison des Potes is one of a range of inner-city community projects supported in France by the EU through its €700 million Urban 2 programme 2000-2006.
Nine city regions were identified throughout France for investment worth €102 million, including some of the worst affected by the recent rioting, such as Clichy-sous-Bois.
The programme extends throughout the EU, with Ballyfermot in Dublin benefiting from a grant of €5.3 million to support projects designed to boost depressed urban areas, and Belfast receiving €10.6 million in funds through the Urban project.
"The programmes in France cover an area with a total population of more than 300,000 people where there is a lot of young people with little education, social problems and unemployment," says Olivier Bagarri, manager of the Urban project in Strasbourg.
"If you mix all these elements together then you have a bomb."
The current unrest in France clearly illustrates the need for investment in deprived suburbs, yet the EU has traditionally focused the vast majority of its financial muscle on agricultural though the Common Agricultural Policy. Up until now it has also concentrated its spending on regions rather than cities.
Michael Barnier, the former EU commissioner for regional policy, acknowledged the bloc's limited jurisdiction when he said: "I am not currently the European commissioner for urban affairs and I have no ambition to be so in the future." However, the recent troubles in France are adding momentum to a commission campaign to extend its reach further into urban affairs and to the cities of Europe.
Commission president José Manuel Barroso yesterday offered France the freedom to reallocate €50 million in EU regional aid to urban projects to help regeneration in cities and towns affected by violence. Meanwhile, Danuta Hubner, regional policy commissioner, is lobbying member states to seek agreement on giving the EU a wider role in urban regeneration projects in the next budget period 2007-2013.
"Everyone acknowledges that the problems in French cities are the same as those faced by other cities across Europe," says Rudolf Niessler, head of the Urban project in the European Commission. "We need to take a broader and long-term response."
The commission has proposed axing the Urban programme in the next EU budget 2007-2013 in favour of a more ambitious scheme to set urban redevelopment projects within the current regional aid schemes.
Next month it will circulate a paper to member states aimed at amending the rules used to allocate EU funds to promote a greater focus on deprived areas of cities and towns.
"One of the failures of EU structural funding has been that, except in the small areas of direct urban funding, cities have remained very passive in the process," says Mr Niessler.
But extending the EU's competency further in urban affairs is contentious for some member states, such as Germany, which has a well-developed federal system. This urban/regional debate will be just one of the hotly-debated topics in EU budget talks scheduled for December. But the backdrop of rioting in France will add a new dimension to the institutional wrangling that is commonplace in Brussels negotiations.