Brussels, 29/05/2015 (Agence Europe) - In Brussels on Thursday 28 May, the office of the Euro-Mediterranean Regional and Local Assembly (ARLEM) began preparing its opinion on the review of the European neighbourhood policy (ENP) for its plenary session in Nicosia in January 2016. European Commissioner for Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations Johannes Hahn was invited to give a critical point of view on this policy that the Commission is ready to review. The ARLEM members underline the need to account of a more important role for regional and local authorities, with the idea of creating macro-regions involving common action in territories on both sides of the Mediterranean.
Opening the debates, ARLEM co-chair and president of the Committee of the Regions (CoR) Markku Markkula, said that “the ENP should put greater emphasis on strategic priorities: democratic governance and especially decentralisation, and sustainable territorial development”. He also highlighted the need for “complementarity” between the ENP and the mission assigned to the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) by the European Commission.
Markkula called for “greater synergies with the European development policy and the migration agenda, as well as with other structural policies and financial instruments”. These “can bring considerable added value”, he said.
He also reiterated the call launched by ARLEM to strengthen the capacities of regional and local authorities. Public administrations “must be allowed at the local level to implement reforms, through training exercises and EU mechanisms to improve the strengthening of capacities, especially an instrument for reformed local administration”, he said.
The two co-chairs of ARLEM, Markkula and Hani Abdelmasih al-Hayek (the mayor of Beit Sour in Palestine), thanked Hahn and High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini for their attention to the “regional dimension” of relations with the Mediterranean - which were deemed to be too greatly overlooked by the previous Commission. Hahn reiterated that the issue of regional policy was of interest to him as he was responsible for this in his previous mandate. He shared his opinion that “cross-border cooperation is a necessity, especially in the Mediterranean”.
Hahn underlined the duty of tightening links more closely in this region of the world, because “we are seeking stability for ourselves and for our neighbours” and this is a “common interest”. This will enable “links to be woven which will make people better aware of the benefits of our [common] action”. Hahn proposes that the solutions to be designed in order to boost this policy be “tailor-made”, and also proposes an “institutional simplification” in order to avoid the duplication that has been observed of structures and organisations in the Euro-Mediterranean area.
In Hahn's view, boosting trade is something that should also be promoted. In the 43-member bloc of the UfM, which includes the 28 EU member states, trade remains insignificant. “Between the 14 non-EU, this trade is no more than 2-3%” of their overall foreign trade. Overall, Hahn proposes that there should be a move towards “concrete projects” and “periodical meetings” to assess such projects and to show the impact of these policies based on a regular dialogue with regional and local authorities and on the synergies between them. (Fathi B'Chir)