Brussels, 30/09/2010 (Agence Europe) - What should be the reaction to the current ravages of the crisis? The answer lies in checking our tendency to look inwards, to look only at our own region and in opening up to Europe to help regions develop economically. It will be with the regions, with cohesion policy that we get out of this crisis. Strategic coordinated approaches and investment in economic forces on the ground are needed. In order to ensure that there is a strategy to defend the regions, the Conference of Peripheral Maritime Regions (CPMR) has sent a letter to European Commission President José Manuel Barroso, calling on him to set up a framework for coordinating all European funds. It was in these terms that new CPMR Secretary General Eleni Marianou set the tone for the 38th General Assembly of the CPMR in Aberdeen, Scotland, on Thursday 30 September.
During the debate, chaired by Charles Leygues, former Assistant Director General in DG Regio of the European Commission, on the EU 2020 strategy and the place of cohesion policy, Regional Policy Commissioner Johannes Hahn said: “Europe must be more confident on the world stage”. We need growth, we need to make sure that national budgets are more realistic, and we need to ensure that our economy becomes global - then we will have social peace. “This is a modern policy which can only come about through strong regional policies,” Hahn said, calling for the focus to be on a few policies, “with a high level of priorities”. Regional policy must be seen as an investment policy for people and citizens. “In future, I am certain that regional policy will make Europe more visible,” the commissioner went on. Several million projects have been launched during the financial crisis. This mass of projects - such as SME/SMI initiatives - create jobs, Hahn pointed out.
The lesson to be drawn from the Lisbon Strategy (Leygues noted that this strategy and the EU 2020 strategy were based on an intergovernmental approach) was, Hahn said, that “European targets are broken down into national targets. Whatever the issue, to be effective we need local and regional targets and ambitious European objectives”. European policy had, then, to be strengthened, concentrating on results and continuing to ask what regional policy brings. “I continue to believe that we have to sell this regional policy and find the legal framework which will allow these projects to be taken forward for the benefit of Europe,” Hahn added. The Commissioner highlighted, too, the need for an integrated approach “if we want to retain our freedom of choice at regional level. Shared management is the most effective way to implement policy. We need an integrated approach, then, and the Commission must help countries and regions,” Hahn said. (G.B./transl.rt)