Territorial conditionality in the "European Semester”, Committee of the Regions’ (CoR) observer status in Council workgroups, etc.
During the second taskforce on subsidiarity and proportionality on Friday 23 February, there was no shortage of proposals in the presentation made by the three members of the CoR on how to improve the participation and taking into account of the local and regional authorities in the different European level legislative phases.
On the legislative preparation phase, Michael Schneider (EPP, Germany) explained that the Commission should make the regional impact studies in its policies systematic. He suggested that the regulatory examination committee - in charge of assessing the quality of draft impact and assessment evaluation reports - should include at least one member with a good knowledge of local and regional questions. Similarly, he also put forward the idea of enhancing the role of the CoR in the inter-institutional agreements and, at a more general level, take the regional parliaments into better account. During the legislative phase, Schneider suggested that the CoR could attend Council taskforce meeting as an observer.
With regard to the implementation phase, François Decoster (ALDE, France) launched the idea of an ex post analysis of the territorial aspects of European policies and insisted that national implementation plans included the local and regional authorities more. He also thought it necessary to improve data collection and regional analyses through improved cooperation with the European Statistical Office (Eurostat), European Territorial Observatory Network and DG Regio at the European Commission.
Decoster also highlighted the importance of including the local and regional authorities in European coordination policies (economic governance, climate change and social policies). One interesting point included the suggestion of introducing territorial conditionality and observer status in the Council workgroups on economic, social and territorial aspects, for example, by introducing a code of conduct.
The next meeting will be held on 15 March next. The aim is to deliver a final report in June on improving the efficiency of European legislation (see EUROPE 11905). (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)