Brussels, 31/10/2012 (Agence Europe) - National governments are persistently failing to cooperate with the local and regional authorities when national reform programmes are being prepared. This is the observation made by the Committee of the Regions (CoR) in light of its third follow-up report on the EUROPE 2020 strategy.
The president of the Committee of the Regions, Ramón Luis Valcárcel Siso, also explained that, “multilevel governance is a prerequisite for the success of the EUROPE 2020 strategy but is far from being a common practice. National reform programmes still do not include it. In its annual examination of growth for 2013, the EU and its specific per country recommendations must subsequently and firmly encourage the different levels of government to work in partnership”.
Elsewhere, current implementation of the 2020 objectives suggests that additional funding should be granted to the regions so that their contribution to the construction can be made. The coordinator for the CoR EUROPE 2020 Monitoring Platform, Michel Delebarre, criticised the fact that, “So far EUROPE 2020 was not translated into budget figures. The moment of truth is yet to come with the negotiations on the financial perspectives as of 2014. If they are serious about EUROPE 2020 and thus about growth, European leaders must provide it with adequate funding,” he said. (MD/transl.fl)