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The latest draft of the Committee of the Regions Opinion "The challenges of metropolitan regions and their position in the future Cohesion policy post 2020" has been approved at committee stage and will next be submitted for plenary approval on December 04 2019.

The text for final approval now includes specific reference to metropolitan "regions" having "....strong links with peri-urban and rural areas ...." as a result of representations by PURPLE. Of course, PURPLE would also argue that much territory within "metroplitan regions" is itself peri-urban in reality. The text now also contains reference to the need to distinguish between highly urbanised and less urbanised areas, and an acknowledgement that "... the predominent model (of settlement pattern, presumably) in Europe is polycentric. There is also reference to the need to move beyond GDP as a sole indicator when calculating funding allocations (a cause PURPLE has long supported), and to the fragmented governance patterns within metropolitan areas. The text also concedes that there is in reality "... no consensus on criteria defining and delimiting Metropolitan Regions...".

The Rapporteur for the Opinion is Juraj Droba, Chairman of the Bratislava self-governing region and the draft Opinion in all offical languages can be found here:

https://cor.europa.eu/EN/our-work/Pages/OpinionTimeline.aspx?opId=CDR-1896-2019