Brussels, 18/03/2005 (Agence Europe) - Concerned about the approach recommended by the Commission for implementation of the Lisbon strategy based essentially on Member States via the national action plans, while ignoring the role of the regional and local authorities, the Committee of the Regions (CoR) adopted a resolution on revitalisation of the Lisbon strategy, during its plenary session end February. In the resolution, the Committee: - regrets that the local and regional authorities cannot participate through direct levels of communication at the European level as “the absence of a genuinely decentralised approach is one of the reasons why the Lisbon agenda is behind schedule”; - calls on the Commission to reform the method of open coordination for greater involvement of regional and local authorities and calls on Member States to integrate the regional and local authorities in drawing up their national plans in order to take account of local and regional specificities in the Lisbon process; - warns that, if the Lisbon process does not become more targeted, more transparent and more democratic, it will suffer from weak application by Member States; - suggests establishing a classification to compare the reform efforts by Member States; - considers that the achievement of the Lisbon objectives, a credible cohesion policy and a financial framework to meet its ambitions cannot be disassociated; - urges for the rules of the Stability and Growth Pact to be made more flexible in order to take better account of the diversity of the economic situations in the EU countries and their investment related to implementation of the Lisbon strategy; - calls, on the subject of services of general interest, for the EU to give preference to improving the system in order to ensure the provision of quality services in the long term; - and expresses concern that the investment in human resources and the fight against social exclusion are not evoked in the Commission's communication.