From 13th to 15th October 2025, the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy (DG REGIO) and the European Committee of the Regions (CoR) jointly organised the European Week of Regions and Cities in Brussels. It is one of the largest annual events, where cities and regions showcase their projects, best practice examples, and experiences to support the European Union’s Cohesion policy.
Since 2003, the event has been bringing together regional policy experts and practitioners, public officials at all levels (EU, national, regional and local), private representatives, policymakers, academia, journalists, civil society and citizens. It serves as a communication, engagement and networking platform to exchange knowledge and foster cooperation across a diverse community.
The workshop session ‘Cities Leveraging Data for Impact: showcasing real-life success stories’ was coordinated by the EU Publication Office and MasterCard Europe with three speakers on the panel – Dr. Mani Dhingra (City of Dublin), Dr. Olaf Astika (City of Warsaw), and Carlos Martins Ferreira (Publications Office of the EU). Audience comprised mostly government and public authorities, followed by academic and research institutions, private sector and industry and EU institutions & agencies and regional, NGO and collaborative networks.
The session, moderated by Katarina Kakalikova (MasterCard), explored the value of reliable data insights, digital twins, open data, and evidence-based policymaking for solving the challenges which cities and regions are currently facing. Foregrounding with an analysis of the national strike in Belgium on 14th October and its economic impact, an interactive session followed, where the audience participated in three policy scenario situations and looked at potential data for gathering key insights.
Dr. Dhingra discussed her experience of working as an embedded researcher on urban digital twins at Dublin City Council. She emphasised the value of trusted data sources for any technology-driven project. Dublin’s model of partnering with leading national research centres in Ireland, enterprises and private companies demonstrates the value of collaboration and innovation. Also, she stressed the importance of citizen engagement and ethical data governance practices for transparent decision-making processes. She highlighted how Dublin participates in transnational cooperation and mutual knowledge exchange around digital twins for cities, their best practices and governance frameworks.
Dr. Olaf Astika’s in the context of the city of Warsaw mentioned the ethos that data is a language of democracy and how open data builds public trust. He also warned that complex models can hinder understanding, yet simple but meaningful visualisations can communicate better with decision‑makers. Carlos Martins Ferreira manages the data.europa.eu portal, which hosts nearly 2 million datasets – enabling open access and reuse of high quality and trustworthy data.
The panel concluded with common interoperability issues, limitations of data modelling, the importance of public engagement, and the need for shared governance cultures. In the end, it is about the story behind the numbers and graphs that is needed for public understanding and real policy impact.
