Brussels, 04/02/2003 (Agence Europe) - With a view to the plenary of the European Convention devoted to the regional dimension of European construction this coming Friday (see yesterday's EUROPE, p.6), European member of the Valdôtaine Union Luciano Caveri, Chair of the Committee on Regional Policy, Transport and Tourism of the European Parliament where he has a seat with the Liberal Group, wrote to Chairman Giscard d'Estaing, to Vice-Presidents Giuliano Amato and Jean-Claude Dehaene, as well as to the Italian Convention Members. In his letter he states that the recognition of the role of the regions and cultural, linguistic and historic differences, which are at the basis of European construction, should be necessarily included in the future Constitution of the Union. This is particularly important for someone who, like himself, he said, belongs to a region with special status like the Val d'Aosta, which is also a territory with high mountains and where linguistic minorities live. He went on to add that, if one places value on institutional, territorial and cultural diversity, this also means adjusting the constitutional and legal instruments to better implement Union policies. He notes that, as the second intermediary report on cohesion highlights, it will be necessary over coming years to take into account the needs of the regions that suffer from permanent natural or geographic handicaps such as mountainous regions, islands and areas that are sparsely populated. In his view, it would be a serious omission on the part of the Convention if it did not explicitly recall a commitment of this kind towards European citizens who face the difficulties of such regions on a daily basis.