Cities are important drivers of economic growth in the EU. They are actors of open innovation; they contribute to creating, designing and implementing integrated and innovative solutions. At the same time, many challenges have a strong impact on cities, and it is there that they are best addressed. Those challenges include, among others, migration and climate change.
To address those, the Pact of Amsterdam established the Urban Agenda for the EU in 2016. It paved the way towards a closer association of cities to the development of EU and national policies. In this view, the Council called for an integrated approach, combined with a long-term vision, in order to promote well-managed, socially inclusive, as well as safe, resilient, environmentally sustainable cities.
CEPA offers to contribute to the improvement of urban health and hygiene by putting Integrated Pest Management (IPM) provided by Professional Pest Management Services as a key-stone for the effective and sustainable improvement of public health. The integration of the CEPA CERTIFIED® scheme as a professional standard is instrumental in achieving that. The CEPA Memorandum of Understanding supported by cross-sectoral industry, the Committee of the Regions and NGOs is essential to reinforce the level of trust between clients and the pest management sector and to secure safe living and working environments.
Second, most of the pest issues are best tackled at macro level. In doing so, partnerships with administrative bodies will enable the exchange of information and allow pest controllers to operate at the right level of intervention, knowing the full general picture and not only focussing on individual cases.