On the occasion of the General Assembly of the Conference of Peripheral and Maritime Regions (CPMR), on Thursday 17 and Friday 18 October, local and regional authorities reiterated their determination to place insularity back at the heart of European policies.
"The European Union underestimates the considerable asset that its coastlines and islands represent. We need to take a new look at maritime ambition", insisted the Member of Parliament and Chair of the European Parliament's Committee on Regional Development, Younous Omarjee, who was invited to the event on Friday 18 October, recalling how they were "at the crossroads of all global transformations”, particularly climate change.
The CPMR wants the European Commission to resume its work on Article 174 of the TFEU, which is dedicated to territorial cohesion. The ultimate objective is to implement a whole series of legislative and non-legislative initiatives to take into account the specific characteristics of the islands. They are therefore calling on the European Commission to rapidly publish a White Paper following on from the 2008 Green Paper on territorial cohesion.
To this end, the CPMR intends to work hand-in-hand with the Croatian Presidency of the Council of the EU, which will take over the baton upon the end of the Finnish Presidency in January 2020. Indeed, the Croatian Presidency has made insularity one of its priorities. The country is considered to be an example in this field, and to be one of the few (alongside Scotland and Finland) to have in place specific legislation for islands.
Another objective of the CPMR is to ensure that the 8th State of Cohesion Report, scheduled for September 2020, takes into account insularity in a transversal way. The reason is that without relevant measures and data, there can be no adequate political action.
Island regions suffer from multiple handicaps: geographical, demographic, economic, and topographical. However, the islands are not all in this together, we are told, since the outermost islands (Article 349 TFEU) benefit from special attention from which the islands covered by Article 174 TFEU would also like to benefit. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)