Almost fail to involve European city in work on paper (7)
I believe the answer is:
origami
'work on paper' is the definition.
'almost fail to involve european city' is the wordplay.
'almost' means to remove the last letter (most of the word but not all of it).
'fail' becomes 'omit' (I've seen this before).
'to involve' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'european city' becomes 'riga'.
'omit' with its last letter taken off is 'omi'.
'omi' enclosing 'riga' is 'ORIGAMI'.
'in' is the link.
(Other definitions for origami that I've seen before include "Art of crafting objects from paper" , "Japanese art of folding paper into decorative shapes" , "Japanese art form -- I'm a giro (rev)" , "Delicate operations" , "Creation of objects from paper" .)