Brussels, 07/07/2011 (Agence Europe) - A delegation of the presidents of the French regions, led by their president Alain Rousset and their vice-president with responsibility for European issues, Jean-Yves Le Drian, met José-Manuel Barroso in Brussels on Thursday 7 July. Their discussions focused on the budget 2014-2020, the EU 2020 strategy, the future of the CAP, the cohesion policy and the specific situation of the intermediate regions, the participation of the regions in the field of research and development via the framework programme (FPRD), the much-needed adaptation of Community policies to the overseas regions, transport and problems related to opening regional rail transport up to competition.
“The president of the Commission is a president with punch, who is extremely precise and specific in his argumentation, with highly political reasoning on the budget of Europe. We are totally behind him”, said Rousset, president of the Association des régions de France (ARF) and of the Regional Council of Aquitaine. A budget to develop transport and transport connections, to set in place the CAP, to develop the cohesion funds and to help the convergence regions, regions leaving convergence and the regions showing competitiveness. “The idea is that Europe will keep an eye on its regions to focus on new energies and energy savings, as well as on innovation and research, on SMEs. This will require financial resources”, Rousset told the press (our translation).
Rousset criticised a press release issued by the French ministers Alain Juppé (foreign affairs), Valérie Pécresse (budget) and Bruno Le Maire (agriculture and fisheries), dated 30 June, “because it calls into question the competitiveness, research, industry and cohesion policies”. “This press release is unacceptable, bewildering because it criticises and calls into question the competitiveness policy at the level of enterprise and our laboratories”, he explains, adding: “we left our meeting with Mr Barroso reassured, we intend to support him”. In their letter, the three French ministers stress that, on the: (1) CAP and fisheries policy: the possibilities to undertake a certain redistribution of aid between the states and their “greening” will be limited by the budgetary choices of the Commission; (2) cohesion policy: the Commission is not learning all possible lessons from the fact that some 20 regions have attained a level of development which allows them to leave the convergence objective: savings are possible; (3) the very steep increase in funds earmarked for so-called competitiveness expenditure is unacceptable when the functioning and effectiveness of this policy are in question and the heads of state and government have called clearly for a bottom-up reform: increasing the budget for this policy, particularly to such a proportion, before it has been reformed, is not something that should be considered. For more information: delegation.bruxelles@region-bretagne.fr (G.B./transl.fl)