Metropolitan Cities are the driving force for development. In its 2014-2020 programming, the European Union will focus heavily on these cities to re-launch development in the Union from the point of view of sustainability, allocating 5% of the Erdf for that purpose. However, the metropolitan areas in the functional sense often do not coincide with the Metropolitan Cities de jure. In this perspective, the essay discusses the "metropolitan issue" in the context of the reform of Italian territorial reorganization (L.135/2012), with particular reference to the case of the metropolitan city of Venice. This is a typical example of noncoincidence of the metropolitan city, defined in this case by the Province of Venice, with the polycentric metropolitan area (City Region), which comprises the central part of the Veneto and includes the cities of Padua, Treviso and Venice (PaTreVe).
Keywords: City Region, European Policies, Institutional Reforms, Multilevel Governance Jel Classification: H7; H0; P41; R0