Brussels, 10/06/2010 (Agence Europe) - With its adoption of the opinion by Mireille Lacombe (PES, France) in plenary session in Brussels on Thursday 10 June, the Committee of the Regions (CoR) reproaches the European Commission for not providing any role for local and regional authorities in the management of our cultural heritage and protection of historic monuments and sites, even though financial management of these sites falls mainly to them. In her report, Lacombe calls for a member of the CoR to be part of the final selection process at EU level, as is they way for the panel selecting European capitals of culture.
The Committee regrets that the initiative is only open to EU member states, whereas the intergovernmental initiative behind the label included Switzerland, and candidate countries can join in the European capital of culture initiative. It also proposes increasing the number of sites that a country can pre-select, and to which the European panel can grant the label in order to leave the European panel enough discretion in its assessment. It suggests that each member state should be able to put forward a maximum of three candidate sites per year - one more than in the Commission's initial proposal - and that the European panel should be able to award the label to two sites per year and country instead of one, as is being proposed by the Commission.
A CoR press release notes that the new label, which is expected to come into force no later than 2012, aims to showcase sites that symbolise European integration. (G.B./transl.rt)