On Wednesday 30 November, the European Parliament’s Committee on Regional Development (REGI) examined a draft report on the renewed strategy for the outermost regions (ORs) (see EUROPE 12944/12). MEPs called for both more ambitious and more concrete measures to ensure that the strategy delivers on the ground.
Álvaro Amaro (EPP, Portuguese), the rapporteur, welcomed the priority given to the people and the European Commission’s intention to invest in the potential of the ORs. He called for full account to be taken of their geostrategic potential as well as their potential in terms of research and development, space, agriculture and fisheries.
However, he called on the institution to translate the strategy into action, deploring the lack of “concrete measures, goals and a timetable to be achieved in the short and medium term”. For him, the European Parliament must “complement the work”. “We need to have specific ideas for these regions, so that we can positively influence the negotiations for the next Multiannual Financial Framework and the regulations stemming from all the European funds”, he argued.
Present at the debate, the rapporteur of an opinion on the strategy of the European Committee of the Regions (CoR), Pedro de Faria e Castro (EPP, Portuguese), recalled that the objectives of the EU “are to fully enable us to apply all the EU policies at the same level [in the ORs] as in any other region”. Indeed, Article 349 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU (TFEU) requires the Union to take account of their specificities. This is a commitment which, according to the speakers, is not sufficiently implemented in practice. “Article 349 should be automatically applied in all the Commission’s legislative proposals”, he argued.
Finally, Mr Amaro stressed the importance of opting for a “personalised” rather than a “one-size-fits-all” approach and of promoting employment and training. The political groups welcomed the rapporteur’s work, while announcing amendments intended to make the final report as specific and ambitious as possible.
To read the draft report: https://aeur.eu/f/4cz (Original version in French by Hélène Seynaeve)