Wroclaw, 20/05/2005 (Agence Europe) - The some 300 European regional presidents and mayors meeting at the summit in Wroclaw, Poland, on 19 and 20 May, rallied fervently and with conviction in favour of the European Constitution, calling on citizens and parliaments of Member States to say “yes to the future of Europe and to this Constitution”. “We say yes to the European Constitution and to the extra democracy that it confers. We say yes to European solidarity and we say yes to the goal of making Europe the most competitive economy in the world”, Peter Straub, President of the Committee of the Regions (CoR), hammered out as the work of the European Summit of Regions and Cities got under way (see EUROPE 8949). In his view, the message of the Wroclaw Summit is that regions and municipalities have a major role to play in achieving these goals. Decentralisation is not a subsidiary issue and is, on the contrary, one of the keys allowing Europe to fulfil its ambitions, he opined. To those who describe the Constitution as “Neo-Liberal”, Mr Straub answers: “We must fight against this kind of position! (…) We must underline that the principle of responsibility must always go hand n hand with the principle of solidarity. Also, the Treaty defends this last principle in several places. The constitutional treaty is under no circumstances the codification of Neo-Liberal ideology. (…). Europe needs the Constitution” (see other articles on Summit).