Brussels, 12/03/2007 (Agence Europe) - “Bringing Europe's regions together, promoting the exchange of experiences and good practices and building on them can give us all a more promising future,” said Regional Policy Commissioner Danuta Hübner, opening the conference “Fostering competitiveness through innovative technologies, products and healthy communities”, which took place in Brussels on 7-8 March as part of the “Regions for Economic Change” initiative. The conference was organised by the European Commission, in partnership with the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur (PACA) region of France and the Committee of the Regions (CoR). Ms Hübner noted that an estimated €200 billion of the €350 billion allocated to regional policy EU funding for 2007-2013 was targeted at the type of investment that was identified in the Lisbon Strategy as pivotal. Of this sum, €40 billion, more than 10%, will go directly to innovation and R&D.
Territorial cooperation, in all its various forms, was a cohesion policy objective that the CoR set great store by, because it was through this that the CoR's desire to take European integration forward was made real, said CoR President Michel Delebarre, stressing that this desire was dependent on two things: (1) all the regions and cities must be involved in delivering the Lisbon Strategy; and (2) inter-regional cooperation must become a genuine laboratory for innovation. Mr Delebarre highlighted the CoR's “active contribution” to the success of the Regions for Economic Change initiative in establishing the Lisbon Monitoring Platform, a forum comprising 65 regional representatives, which enables local and regional policy makers to exchange ideas and information on the implementation of the Lisbon Strategy. At the conference, Ms Hübner also launched the “Regiostars 2008” awards for innovative projects (see EUROPE 9382). (gb)