EU criticised for ignoring regions

The European commission and national governments have been strongly criticised for ignoring the voice of the regions in their industrial policies.

Michel Delebarre, president of the Committee of the Regions, warned that regions were “getting a little impatient at the inaction…national authorities who have yet to get them involved in the implementation of the Lisbon strategy”.

Delebarre was speaking at the opening of the European week of regions and cities in the presence of EU regional policy commissioner Danuta Hübner and Francisco Nunes Correia, Portugal’s regional development minister representing the member states.

The Frenchman referred to the report from the commission on coping with globalisation that will be discussed at the informal EU summit in Lisbon on 18-19 October.

“The communication failed to live up to our expectations: there is no mention of what is happening at local and regional level.

“It concerns me that the Lisbon strategy is still presented as if it were a matter just for national European administrations.

“The EU cannot allow itself to be so neglectful of what is happening at local and regional level.”

The CoR has created a Lisbon monitoring platform, a network of 100 regions and cities working together to contribute to the EU’s jobs and growth policy.

Regions and cities have also had to fight hard to defend their corner at the IGC, the conference that has drawn up the text of the new EU reform treaty.

An enhanced role for the CoR – notably in monitoring whether EU laws are implemented at the lowest possible level of government, the so called subsidiarity principle – was enshrined in the original constitution.

This role will also be agreed in the reform treaty, but one oversight nearly left the role of the CoR severely undermined.

Negotiators at the IGC had omitted to include a clause in the new text recognising the status and role of the EU institutions advisory bodies – the CoR and the economic and social committee.

In a letter to Portuguese prime minister José Socrates ahead of the negotiations hosted by the presidency, Delebarre warned that such an omission would “be damaging symbolically…and perceived by the CoR and local and regional authorities as a retrograde step, a failure to recognise the efforts they have made”.

 Delebarre’s insistence paid off, and the role of the CoR and EESC has now been included in the new text, but the need to insist on recognition for regions and cities is becoming increasingly wearing for the CoR.

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