Brussels, 11/09/2007 (Agence Europe) - The extraordinary meeting of the Bureau of the Committee of the Regions (CoR) in Vilamoura on 6-7 September (see EUROPE 9492) closed with the call from CoR President Michel Delebarre that, “The intergovernmental conference must strengthen the role of the Committee of the Regions in the future treaty”. Mr Delebarre and the representatives of the Committee found an ally in the person of former Justice and Home Affairs Commissioner and current special adviser to the Portuguese presidency of the EU for the intergovernmental conference (IGC) Antonio Vitorino, who said that “the Committee of the Regions can count on a sympathetic hearing from the Council presidency of its political requests and expectations concerning the reform treaty, as local and regional authorities are closely involved in the European process”. At its meeting, the Bureau of the CoR drew attention to the need for its political role within the European institutional system to be recognised. It adopted a declaration supporting the introduction of a charter of regional democracy, along the lines of the existing charter for local authorities. It also gave its backing to a Euro-Mediterranean forum of local and regional authorities. Mr Delebarre sees this Forum as “a shared arena for exchanges between local and regional elected representatives from both shores of the Mediterranean” “We can point to a significant range of best practices in the field of decentralised cooperation. In this way, the Committee of the Regions will bring added value to the Barcelona process, which merits a new impetus,” says a CoR press release. In addition, the Bureau considered the prospects for regionalisation in Portugal. Portuguese Minister for the Environment, Town and Country Planning and Regional Development Francisco Nunes Correia pointed out that discussions in Portugal were centred on the possibility of creating regions. Currently the Portuguese state was continuing to operate through the municipalities which, in Portugal, “have all the features of micro-regions, and serve as the backbone for the country's political and economic life - this has to be put on the plus side in the decentralisation debate,” the minister said, adding that the present trend would therefore be to strengthen the role of the mainland's 278 municipalities. He mentioned the possibility of “reorganising the decentralisation of state services and public policies” around the NUTS II regions and NUTS III sub-regions. The aim was, he said, to make “a decisive contribution to rapidly reaching a political consensus on the geographical lay-out of the political and administrative units to be submitted to a referendum after 2009, during the next parliamentary term”. (gb)