Time4All

The Time4All project was part of the European Commission’s CERV programme, which awards projects that promote social equality and citizens’ rights. The project reached about 1,700 participants, specifically the youth and women, who are the ones suffering from time poverty effects the most, and lasted two years, between 2023 and 2024, carrying out several activities aimed at local policymakers, citizens, research institutions, and other social partners. 

Time policies promote a better time organisation to improve citizens’ health, equality, productivity, and sustainability, as well as increase civic participation. Promoting a new time organisation, local and regional authorities can respond to the popular demand in recent years — which asks for a more sustainable, more egalitarian life, and a new relation between paid work, unpaid care work, and life. The local and regional dimension has been identified as the area where people live their daily lives, and where a real and crucial difference can be made in the way they organise their time.

European municipalities have pioneered in promoting time policies since the 1990s and, in order to collaborate, they created the Local and Regional Governments TIME Network in 2008. With the Time4All project, the Network aimed to collaborate on three objectives successfully achieved, namely:

1. Encouraging and expanding cooperation between municipalities and the exchange of best practices in time policies. The Local and Regional Agenda contributed to compiling, exchanging and giving visibility to current time policies and new EU cities and regions joined the network during the project, because of their participation in events.
2. Generating citizen awareness around the benefits of a healthier and egalitarian use of time through the project’s exchange activities (European Summer Time School, Capital of Time Policies and Annual Networking Events).
3. Increasing visibility for and knowledge about good examples of local time policies around the EU. The Local and Regional Time Agenda provided examples of good practices in time use in Europe and real recommendations to implement them, leading, in turn, to more time policies created around the EU, which can be seen in the new chapters already being prepared, which have received recently implemented time policies.

In terms of organisations reached, the two agendas compiled 66 good practices, the network added or is in the process of adding 11 new members, and other stakeholders participated in the activities of the project, raising awareness about time policies. Specifically, the outputs of the project were shared with the signatories of the Barcelona Declaration on Time Policies (over 200 organisations in 2024), the members of Tempo Territorial (approximately 30 local authorities in France), and the specific networks on which the partners of the project participate (for example CHANGE, Eurocities, among others).

The project also allowed the network to gain visibility and therefore was invited to explain time policies in key international events such as the Brussels Urban Summit 2023 or the Smart City Expo World Congress, both in 2023 and 2024.

As for the mid-term impacts (up to one year after the end of the project) and long-term impacts (up to three years after the end of the project), it is still early to evaluate them, but positive signs exist that they will be reached successfully. Specifically:

• The network has been enhanced with new partners and has decided to reapply for the CERV call (which has been granted). Therefore, the mutual understanding and friendship created in the current project will continue through the activities of the next one, foreseen for 2025 and 2026.
• The last event, in Strasbourg, allowed the network to celebrate their activities within the European Parliament. As a result, several MEPs have expressed their interest in following up on the issue of the right to time, and currently, the creation of a friendship group in the European Parliament dedicated to the right to time is underway. 
• The concept of World Capital of Time has been successful, and in 2025, it will go beyond the EU frontiers to Bogotá. The network has also received candidatures from other European municipalities interested in becoming Capital for the year 2026.
• The practical approach of many of the activities of the project has allowed the participants to start thinking on ways to implement time policies, therefore directly improving the lives of their citizens. As the Network is preparing to launch a new chapter of the Local and Regional Agenda for 2025, it has already identified new time policies developed during 2023 and 2024 both from partners of the Time4All project and from other cities not directly participating on the project.

As per the specific impacts for target groups, our evaluation is that goals were successfully achieved. Specifically:

• Public institutions, in particular local institutions and policymakers. As a direct result of the project, several public servants at local authorities and elected officials have known time policies and the surrounding concepts, including good practices of implementation. Collaboration among the participants has intensified, and one-to-one contacts to exchange on specific policies have been made during the project and continue after it. The collective narrative built during the project has been shown and explained in the EU arena, through our event on the European Parliament, and those cities active in European networks have also introduced the concept in such networks.
• Citizens (in particular women and youth). The cities hosting the different events (Bergamo, Barcelona, Bolzano and Strasbourg), have not only organised activities for the project partners but also organised a series of activities opened to citizens. This has resulted in increased awareness of time policies and their importance, for example, in Bolzano, the city council organised a participatory process to define the spaces for mobility during the World Capital of Time. As mentioned before, many of the partners have renovated or started new time policies that have impacted directly on their citizens, and that the Network is collecting for the next Local and Regional Agenda.
• Research institutions. Several researchers have participated both as speakers and participants in the two editions of the Time Use Week under this project (WP5 and WP6), as well as European research institutions such as Eurostat and Eurofound. This has helped raise awareness about this growing topic of interest and share interests and challenges amongst the research community, regarding time policies-related research.
• Social stakeholders and civil society organisations. Social stakeholders from different countries have participated both at the Time Use Week and in the events related to the World Capital of Time. This has allowed the network to include them in the discussions and discuss how public action can support companies and workers, and the other way around. Moreover, key representatives of EESC and ILO have also participated in the Time Use Week, providing an international and European framework to discussions about paid work and working time conditions. The approach of right to time and time policies has since been discussed in those institutions and adopted in different national debates by social stakeholders, as can be exemplified by the current debate on the reduction of working hours.

Finally, to summarise the European added value provided by the Time4All project, we would like to highlight the following:

1. The project has successfully rethought key concepts such as the right to time and time policies and updated them to serve key challenges of the EU, such as the climate emergency or the care crisis. The narrative generated during the project could be easily adopted by future strategies at the European level, looking at tackling issues about care, health, and sustainability.
2. At the end of the project, the Barcelona Declaration on Time Policies action plan was renovated for the period 2025 to 2027. This new action plan recognises the Network as the key stakeholder to advance towards time policies at the local level, therefore acknowledging their role and the knowledge generated during the project.
3. After the end of the project, the two key events gathering people from different countries, namely the World Capital of Time and the Time Use Week, will continue to be celebrated and have consolidated themselves as key points for knowledge exchange and connection around time policies. They will also contribute to positioning the countries within the European Union as pioneers on this issue.