The Conference of Peripheral Maritime Regions (CPMR) believes that the European Commission should define a global approach for macro-regional strategies and set out the next steps to strengthen synergies between strategies in a new “communication” or “plan”, in a position paper published on Friday 4 September.
For the regional organisation, the potential of macro-regional strategies is far from being fully exploited, due to the “considerable difficulties” faced by the regions, mainly under-funded financial envelopes and administrative resources and a somewhat fragile political will.
The CPMR therefore proposes that the Commission should come up with a new communication to integrate a macro-regional dimension into sectoral policies. The institution should set up a cross-cutting working group dedicated to macro-regional strategies between the different Directorates General of the European Commission, according to the CPMR.
The CPMR believes it is necessary to improve governance by involving regional players more. Each regional authority for each Member State should sit on the governing bodies, as should associations of local and regional authorities.
The organisation wants to encourage directly managed programmes by designing tenders specifically oriented towards the strategies. It also proposes that the Commission should publish ad hoc guidelines to help the authorities take advantage of these strategies.
For more information: https://bit.ly/3m2hXgE (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)