The President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, praised the Covenant of Mayors – in a speech given during the 31st Meeting for Friendship Among Peoples – saying: “I would very much like to see local and regional authorities extend innovative partnerships like the Covenant of Mayors to other policy areas. This would help Europe to translate its ambitions into reality, while taking account of the immense diversity our continent enjoys, and the differing situations on the ground. This, for me, is subsidiarity in action.”

To download President Barroso’s speech from the Covenant Press area, please click here.

The city of Heidelberg (Germany) – a signatory of the Covenant of Mayors – has launched an ambitious plan to build a large, zero-emissions city district on the site of a former goods station. The new district – which will be known as Bahnstadt – will be centrally located and cover a total of 116 hectares – an area greater than Heidelberg’s old town.

The ‘Urban sustainability – Learning from the best’ catalogue presents the best practices of the eight finalists for the 2010 and 2011 European Green Capital Awards. The catalogue – published by the European Commission in August 2010 – aims to share experiences and visions between European cities, as well as inspire cities to introduce new measures within the field of sustainable urban development.

Procurement decision makers can now calculate the life-cycle costs and carbon dioxide emissions of different innovative products and services they are considering purchasing with the help of the new SMART SPP Tool. The Tool was launched earlier this year in Spanish, English, Portuguese and Danish, and is now also available in German - www.smart-spp.eu.