Members of the European Parliament’s Committee on Regional Development (REGI) unanimously supported on Tuesday 13 July (42 votes in favour) the own-initiative report by Younous Omarjee (The Left, France) which calls for the creation of an Atlantic macro-region to address the shortcomings of the 2013 action plan on the Atlantic maritime strategy.
Indeed, in his explanatory memorandum, the rapporteur notes the “weak results” of the action plan. In the report, the lack of budgetary allocation, and the complexity of the governance of the previous strategy are specifically pointed out.
MEPs call on the Council of the EU to give the Commission a mandate to establish an Atlantic macro-region and, in parallel, to conduct an analysis of this new macro-regional strategy and the potential benefits for the Member States and their regions.
This macro-region would bring together the coastal Spain, France, Ireland, and Portugal, as well as the outermost regions, in order to strengthen their land-sea cooperation and rationalise governance and the various sources of funding.
In this way, the parliamentarians insist on the promotion of sustainable fisheries, responsible tourism, the development of an Atlantic-wide industrial strategy linked to the blue economy, and oceanographic research.
On the governance front, MEPs call for the inclusion of representatives of all regions concerned in the national delegations, as well as those of the outermost regions and coastal municipalities in the implementation of the ‘Atlantic 2.0’ action plan (see EUROPE 12535/5).
“The outermost and coastal regions are the first victims of climate change”, said the rapporteur, who himself comes from an outermost region. He added, “With this report, we wanted them to be the agents of change, both in the field of energy autonomy and in the sustainability of their economies”. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)