Brussels, 09/07/2012 (Agence Europe) - On Monday 9 July, the Council of European Municipalities and Regions (CEMR) called for MEPs to mobilise in support of strengthening the partnership principle in future cohesion policy. The message was delivered before the forthcoming vote on Wednesday 11 July at the parliamentary committee (REGI) responsible for the future of cohesion policy (2014-2020).
“Local and regional authorities can no longer be treated simply as economic, social and environmental stakeholders when it comes to the implementation of cohesion funds”, stated Carola Gunnarsson, CEMR Spokesperson on cohesion policy and Vice-President of the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions (SALAR). “Indeed, they must be fully involved in the preparation, delivery, monitoring and evaluation of the funds”, she added.
Common strategic framework. The CEMR is requesting that the artificial separation between all cohesion-related funds be removed in the framework of the Common strategic framework in order to reinforce the common rules, thus better enforcing the local dimension in all of Europe's territories.
Territorial development tools. The new delivery instruments for territorial development put forward in the Common Provisions Regulation must be properly defined if they are to be fully exploited on the ground by local and regional authorities. This concerns more specifically Community-led local development (CLLD), integrated territorial investments (ITI), the urban agenda, and joint action plans (JAP). CEMR has been working on how territorial development should work in practice, together with European Parliament rapporteur for optimising the role of territorial development, Derek Vaughan.
Conditionality. CEMR calls on members of the European Parliament REGI committee to reject measures that would impose conditionality on local and regional authorities when these cannot be held responsible for what falls under national competence.
CEMR is organising, along with a number of its national member associations of local and regional authorities and four European Commission directorate generals, one of the main sessions of the 2012 Open Days on local development as a key pillar of the 2014-2020 EU territorial development policies. The session will examine how public authorities will apply the principle of local development in their partnership agreements and operational programmes. (LC/transl.fl)