The UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is a comprehensive framework for actions, with social, economic, environmental and governance dimensions. The CoR has been approached by numerous regions, cities, European associations, as well as by international organizations such as OECD, UNDP and nrg4SD, for collaboration to improve the take-up of SDGs at regional and local levels, mainly in the EU context.
The study has the objective of informing the future CoR rapporteur of the opinion reacting to the EU Reflection Paper on Sustainable Europe by 2030 about the state of play of the SDGs, and the place of the regions and cities in their implementation. In addition, the report has the aim to inform members about the potential role of the CoR for the implementation of SDGs at all levels.

The study is composed of 4 parts: 

• The first part provides a briefly background about the SDGs and its adoption in UN architecture in particularly in EU context. 

• The second part analyzes the role of regions and cities in the implementation of SDGs focusing on governance and coordination between multi-level governance of SDG. 

• The third part is composed by theorical and empirical analysis about technical and financial assistance for the implementation of SDGs at regional and local-based level. 

• The last part contains suppositions about the future role of the CoR within the SDG process in relation to different actors (regions, cities, the EU and the UN). 

• The analysis is based on desk research and a series of interviews with regions and cities that are involved in the implementation of SDGs.

  The final report of the study is available here.