Lille, 03/11/2000 (Agence Europe) - The meeting, on Thursday in Lille, on the sidelines on the conference regional planning, the Ministers for ten European countries responsible for urban policy enabled to move forward the talks over a cooperation programme, without concrete decision being taken. The next Swedish and Belgian Presidencies of the Council will have to push this forward and implement the cooperation programme, which covers the contents of the policies, the methods for intervention and the exchanges in experiences, announced the French Delegate Minister to cities Claude Bartolone. Following the meeting, he welcomed the agreement by the successive Presidencies of the Council - of Portugal at the start of this year up to Belgium in the second half of 2001 - to define a multi-annual work programme. The French Minister recalled the urban policy is already taken into account in the EU as the Community Urban initiative, responsible for supporting projects aimed at urban areas in difficulty, was extended, and that Objective 2 will also enable to support cities in difficulty.
The issue of the structure responsible for ensuring the follow-up to the talks on urban policy cooperation, which of the regional planning aspects (see yesterday's EUROPE, p.14) was broached during the ministerial meeting. "We can understand the Commission's position, which is under pressure, among others from the Court of Auditors" (in order to reduce the number of working groups, Ed)", indicated Claude Bartolone to EUROPE, "but the Commission must also understand that we do not want any dissolution of work on urban policy". Commissioner Barnier would have taken several "clear undertakings", on the participation of national experts in urban policy among others, and the issue should thus be resolved. However this takes time. Claude Bartolone feels that the institutional issue should be resolved "under the Belgian Presidency".
Friday morning allowed to discuss the workshops that took place the day before on the various aspects of regional planning. These workshops underlined the importance of a voluntary policy that would go through action studies. Claude Brevan, French inter-ministerial delegate to the city, supported this point of view and underlined that the "true difficulty is to identify the margins for manoeuvre that can be found to counter the moves on the ground", which goes rather against the multiplication of activity centres in Europe.