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Committee of the Region to act on the Euro-Med commitment to relaunch regional and local projects
20.07.2008, 17:51
On 13 July, prior to the opening of the Summit for the Mediterranean held in Paris by the French EU presidency, Bernard Kouchner, French foreign and European affairs minister, invited Luc Van den Brande, president of the Committee of the Regions (CoR), to join a working lunch held in Paris for the foreign ministers of the 27 EU Member States and the Mediterranean countries.
This meeting enabled Mr Van den Brande to stress the role played by the regional and local authorities in the implementation of the renewed Euro-Mediterranean Partnership and to draw attention to the Committee of the Regions' involvement in this debate after the French EU presidency had consulted it on the local and regional dimension of the Union for the Mediterranean, and following the CoR's commitment to set up a Euro-Mediterranean assembly of regional and local authorities to play a consultative role in the future governance of the Barcelona process: the Union for the Mediterranean.
"If we want to get concrete results" emphasised the president of the Committee of the Regions "the Barcelona process today relaunched by the Union for the Mediterranean will have to go beyond intergovernmental relations and also promote the regional and local cooperation that regional and local authorities are successfully developing. The Committee will contribute to fulfilling the commitments of the Paris summit."
This vision is shared by the French EU presidency and the Paris summit participant countries: Thus, Bernard Kouchner, addressing the foreign ministers of the countries attending the Paris summit, stated that we needed "to focus our energy on major practical projects and so meet the citizens' expectations and develop de facto solidarity. If the Union for the Mediterranean is to fulfil the hopes pinned on it, we have to act at grassroots level, at the most local level."
The summit's conclusions highlighted the importance of solidarity forged at the local level: Heads of State and Government underscore the importance of the active participation of civil society, local and regional authorities and the private sector in the implementation of the Barcelona Process: Union for the Mediterranean."
In order to build this new momentum for the Mediterranean on concrete projects, the Heads of State and Government undertook to "increase co-ownership of the process, set governance on the basis of equal footing and translate it into concrete projects, more visible to citizens". This would make relations along the three Mediterranean coasts "more concrete and visible through additional regional and subregional projects, relevant for the citizens of the region."
In a letter addressed to the President of the Council of the European Union, Nicolas Sarkozy, Luc Van den Brande stressed the importance of adding a "regional and local dimension" to the process by creating "an institutional framework that will enable the regional and local authorities of the Euro-Mediterranean partnership to engage in direct dialogue with the EU institutions".
This proposal, which was reiterated at the Forum of Local and Regional Authorities of the Mediterranean held in Marseilles on 23 June 2008, was put to several foreign ministers from partner countries along the three Mediterranean coastal regions, as well as the European Commission, with which the CoR president met in conjunction with the Paris summit.
Source: www.cor.eu