The new President of the Committee of the Regions (COR), Karl-Heinz Lambertz (S&D, Belgium), has said that he would like to review the way in which members of the organisation work in an attempt to provide more room for “political debate” and “networking”. He made these views known during a press briefing following his election on Wednesday 12 July.
He explained that, “around 700 political leaders regularly come here to attend plenaries and committees. We need the time spent in Brussels to be used in an optimum way so that our messages are heard”. He added, “When I see the thousands of hours spent discussing and voting on innumerable amendments, I’m not sure that this is the ideal way of getting ourselves heard”. The president is therefore seeking to change the way in which they work on the texts, “so that they spend less time in meetings and provide more of a place to real political debates and networking”.
The president also explained that he wanted to build greater ties with the “tens of thousands of local and regional European authorities”. He argues that it is therefore necessary to strengthen the visibility of their institution on the ground and in this regard, would like to use these authorities that have an office in Brussels, as a contact point.
With regard to relations with the other European institutions, the president would like to continue the on-going work to strengthen ties between the CoR and European Parliament in the legislative area as a means to foster an “optimum basis” on which to work together. The president would like to go even further and is ultimately in favour of the CoR being represented in the inter-institutional negotiations - as a means of having a closer relationship with the Council, “which is a difficult planet to land on”.
Post-2020 cohesion policy. On the subject of post-2020 cohesion policy, the President is less iconoclastic and maintains the position contained in the CoR opinion on the issue (see EUROPE 11787). Mr Lambertz therefore indicated that he would like to see cohesion policy maintained as Europe’s number one investment instrument and in this regard, would like to see a genuine effort from net contributors in this sense, which are Germany, France and the Netherlands.
He also added that he also expected beneficiaries such as Poland and Hungary, two member states currently in the EU’s sights (see other article) to make their Union identity “more visible” and that they demonstrate their good faith in promoting European values.
In this regard, however, the President made it clear that he was opposed to conditions in the allocation of structural and investment funds, which he judged “unfair” and “inefficient”. Mr Lambertz pointed out that this mechanism had not “politically” functioned correctly against Portugal and Spain (see EUROPE 11669).
With regard to Brexit, the president considers that the United Kingdom’s withdrawal should not have an impact on the current financial framework, provoke any payment delays or affect the scale of cohesion policy with regard to the global European budget in the next multiannual financial framework. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)