Brussels, 08/12/2011 (Agence Europe) - The secretary general of the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM), Youssef Amrani, underlined, on Wednesday 7 December, the strategic importance of the towns and regions for consolidating democratic progress in the southern Mediterranean. Speaking in Marseilles during the European People's Party (EPP) Study Days, he explained that this is a major expectation of the southern neighbourhood. Today, he went on to say, one should give decentralised cooperation instruments the place they deserve, and adapt them to recent events, with the provision of adequate financing.
French MEP Gaston Franco (EPP) took the view that decentralised cooperation comes within the context of the innovative and effective tools that Europe's partners expect. Civil society, he added, has shown its importance and its weight in the political changes that have taken place and it is therefore at a new level, that of proximity, that there must be further collaboration. Such models do exist, he said, saying that it is now necessary for these to be institutionalised, and it is important today to give concrete substance to joint projects. (CG/transl.jl)