The (Slowly) Changing Face of Europe’s Mayors
Despite some high-profile exceptions, most mayors across European cities do not reflect the increasing diversity of urban populations, a new survey finds.
Berlin Governing Mayor Franziska Giffey (left) with Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo in 2022.
Photo by Jens Kalaene/picture alliance via Getty Images
The average European big-city mayor is a 54-year-old white man belonging to a center-left party. So finds a new survey compiled by LSE Cities’ European Cities Programme that outlines trends in mayorship in European cities with a population of over 200,000.
The data provides insights into who continues to hold the reins of power across the continent: Male mayors outnumber female by more than three to one, while only seven major European cities (three of them in the UK) have mayors from minority ethnic backgrounds. The European Cities program, which created the research, is run with the support of Bloomberg Philanthropies. (Bloomberg Philanthropies is the philanthropic organization of Michael Bloomberg, the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, which owns Bloomberg News.)