Brussels, 14/07/2014 (Agence Europe) - The Committee of the Regions (CoR) has advocated multilevel governance for the start-up of the Adriatic-Ionian macro-regional strategy (Italy, Slovenia, Greece, Croatia, Albania, Montenegro, Serbia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina). This strategy was proposed by the European Commission in June and is expected to be adopted by the Council in October, as the Italian Presidency wishes. Nonetheless, the EU28 should not circumvent local and regional authorities, stressed CoR members during a conference on the subject in Fabriano, Italy on Friday 11 July. CoR president, Michel Lebrun, stated at this event that an “integrated transnational approach to policies like transport, tourism development, environment protection, spatial and maritime planning can really bring new solutions to problems that cannot be dealt with effectively in a separate way, but requires an innovative, multilevel governance”. The CoR is also calling on the member states currently preparing their operational programmes for the absorption of structural funds for the 2014-2020 period, to take into account local-level organisations when allocating funding, particularly with regard to the technical assistance for the macro strategy. (MD)