Brussels: The right to stay moved closer to the centre of EU regional policy on 1 October 2026, when the European Parliament’s Committee on Regional Development (REGI) unanimously adopted a report by Italian MEP Denis Nesci. The text on the EU Urban Agenda argues that people and young families should be able to remain in their home regions if they choose. Nesci, who sits with the ECR group, now takes the report to a plenary vote that agenceurope expects in November.
The report asks the Commission and national governments to back local jobs, services, infrastructure and investment, so that leaving home becomes a choice rather than an obligation. It names housing, urban safety, essential services, mobility and artificial intelligence as areas where towns need help. Nesci argues that Europe cannot be built only around big metropolitan areas, because a Europe of small and medium-sized centres also exists.
The practical proposals sit at the core of the text. MEPs want simpler access to EU funding for smaller municipalities and a single European service desk where local authorities can find funding information and technical support. For mayors in depopulating regions, grant paperwork is often the main barrier, so the right to stay depends on whether administrative burdens shrink as budgets grow.
Governments already lean the same way. Cohesion ministers endorsed the right to stay at a meeting in Nicosia on 5 June 2026 under the Cyprus Council presidency, where Cypriot finance minister Makis Keravnos said every EU citizen should be able to live, work and create in their own place. Commission Executive Vice-President Raffaele Fitto attended, and the Commission’s Joint Research Centre published a demographic outlook on the right to stay in November 2025.
The European Committee of the Regions has pressed the same case with EU27 cohesion ministers at an informal meeting in Dublin. Its message is that cohesion policy must answer rising housing costs, security worries, unequal access to services and natural disasters, which push people out of rural and island communities. Calabria, where Nesci was elected, offers a clear example of a region that is losing residents.
Money will decide how far the idea travels. Negotiations on the 2028-2034 multiannual financial framework will set the size and shape of future cohesion funds, and the Parliament report adds pressure to write the right to stay into those rules. MEPs from island regions have already warned that the strategies adopted so far largely compile existing legislation and offer too little new funding, as Agence Europe reported from the Paphos conference in June.
The plenary vote will show whether Parliament can turn the right to stay from a political slogan into a binding principle of cohesion policy. Local leaders in shrinking regions will watch the result closely, and the Commission’s next cohesion proposals will reveal how much of Nesci’s report survives the budget talks.
