Municipalities, cities and regions are responsible for planning and implementing several policies in their territories: housing, mobility, inclusion, culture, climate and environment, support to businesses, social and health care, buildings and infrastructure, water and waste management, and so on1. All this, in an increasingly financially tight environment. Following the COVID-19 pandemic that left subnational governments struggling with the scissor effect: additional spending for less revenues2; and a global inflation context that puts delivery of usual local and regional services at risk in most European countries, deciding where and how to allocate a local/regional budget is an increasingly strategic decision.

The budget of local and regional governments can therefore become a powerful tool to achieve their policy objectives: participatory budgeting, people-centred budgeting, and green- or – SDG budgeting. Through process or policy-oriented budgeting, municipalities, cities, and regions can better engage and reflect the priorities of the inhabitants or achieve strategic sustainable development goals. In this training event “Innovative-Budgeting – the power of subnational finance”, the Council of European Municipalities and Regions will gather experts and practitioners to exchange and share knowledge on the different practices and approaches to strategic budgeting.

Objectives of the training event:

• Understanding of the different process-oriented or priority-oriented methodologies of subnational
• Overview of the variety of approaches and focuses for strategic subnational
• Getting inspired from the experience of municipalities, cities and regions have implemented “Innovative-budgeting”.
• Getting to know the existing organisations, programmes and support material that can help subnational governments implement “Innovative-budgeting”.