During his speech on the state of the union to open the plenary session of the Committee of the Regions (CoR) and in the framework of the debate with the president of the European Parliament, Antonio Tajani, on Tuesday 9 October, the president of the Committee of the Regions, Karl-Heinz Lambertz, officially announced that a European summit of cities and regions will be held on 14 and 15 March 2019.
"In the coming days, I will, on your behalf, be calling on the local and regional elected representatives of Europe to develop the message together to be sent out in the Declaration of our Eighth Summit of Cities and Regions in March 2019", the CoR president announced. "The guiding theme of this summit will be rebuilding the European Union from the bottom up, in other words starting from the municipalities, cities and regions of Europe", he went on, announcing that it would feed into a declaration. The aim is to send out calls to the heads of state or government ahead of the Sibiu summit, to be held in May (see EUROPE 11861), but also to the next European Commission and the next European Parliament.
During his address, the president explained that he hoped to monitor the conclusions of the 'subsidiarity and proportionality' working group and to push forward the principle of "active subsidiarity" as well as various recommendations, particularly to create networks of regional hubs to support examinations of the implementation of European policies. The aim is to get around 20 regions involved initially, for a period of two years, to develop methodology to report back on the implementation of EU policies. Eventually, the aim will be to extend this project to all local and regional collectivities.
Lambertz also announced that he hopes to make citizens' dialogues permanent and to set in place a permanent mechanism after the 2019 European elections. He stressed that local and regional representatives will have a key role in this future mechanism. The president also explained that he planned to start cooperative work with the president of the European Economic and Social Committee, Luca Jahier, to reinforce European democratic life at local level and within civil society.
Finally, the president announced the launch of a campaign in partnership with the European Commission to add value to migrant integration projects at local and regional level. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)