At the start of the week for regions and cities, Committee of the Regions (CoR) President Apostolos Tzitzikostas (EPP, Greece), launched a host of proposals to strengthen cooperation between cities and regions in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic on Monday 12 October.
Mr Tzitzikostas stressed, in the presence of the President of the European Commission, that Ms Ursula von der Leyen had forgotten the regions and cities in her State of the Union address in mid-September.
“During your State of the Union speech, you rightly paid tribute to the heroes of this crisis: doctors, nurses and the first responders. Today, I pay tribute to the unsung heroes at the forefront of the pandemic: Mayors, Presidents of Regions, Councillors”.
However, for the politician, local authorities deserve more attention, as 90% of them expect a drop in income. Thus, for Mr Tzitzikostas, it is necessary to better coordinate the action of local, regional, national and European actors in economic recovery, taking full account of the territorial impact.
In the view of the CoR president, combating the “scissor effect” - a term describing the shift on a downward curve between expenditure and income - must be a priority. Mr Tzitzikostas noted that the Recovery Plan must be “sustainable and inclusive”, i.e. it must at least slow down investment in fossil fuels [a key issue in the upcoming negotiations on the Just Transition Fund, see EUROPE 12562/20 ed.] and provide for “direct access” by cities and regions.
In addition, Mr Tzitzikostas called for the creation of an annual Forum on Cohesion and Resilience to follow up on the EU budget for 2021-2027. He also called for the establishment of a permanent exchange mechanism between border regions in the field of health and emergency services.
Referring to the Conference on the Future of Europe, the Greek called for a review of the balance of competences in the field of health. Taking up the mechanism for permanent dialogue with regional authorities devised by his predecessor Karl-Heinz Lambertz (see EUROPE 12422/2), he suggested a new partnership which would make it possible to organise local dialogues on people's needs in order to assess the impact of EU decisions “on an ongoing basis”.
Finally, the CoR president proposed that Ms von der Leyen should include a regional and local dimension in her next State of the Union address. Before inviting her to the presentation of the next Autumn barometer.
First regional and local barometer
On Monday, the Committee of the Regions published its first regional and local barometer. The numbers are irrefutable: 83% of regions and cities expect their tax revenues to fall by 2020, and 53% expect a sharp drop by 2021. For the organisation, it is therefore absolutely necessary to allocate support from the Recovery and Resilience Facility, the budgetary instrument at the heart of the European Recovery Plan, according to the territorial impact of the pandemic. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)