Brussels, 08/11/2007 (Agence Europe) - In Brussels on Thursday 8 November, the EPP-ED group at the European Parliament held a public hearing on 'A new regional policy: innovative ideas of the post-2013 reform'. The participants, invited by Gerardo Galeote, the president of the European Parliament's development committee, examined how regional policy can adapt to the new challenges set out in the European Commission's 4th Cohesion Report.
The vice-president of the Committee of the Regions' COTER commission (Territorial Cohesion Policy Commission), Michael Schneider, gave an overview of his opinion on the issue and described the excellent work between the two assemblies.
Presenting the hearing's general conclusions, the EPP-ED spokesperson for Cohesion Policy, Lambert van Nistelrooij, pointed out that: 1) Cohesion policy has to continue beyond 2013; 2) the Lisbon strategy must be taken into account because it forces the regions to pay attention to growth, employment and methodology in order to determine how regional policy operates; 3) territorial cohesion policy concerns all regions. The specific nature of peripheral and rural regions needs to be taken into consideration, along with the programming periods; 4) Is clustering essential or is it a development tool and a way of speeding up the process of catching up with world competition? This should be one of the central objectives of our reflection, warned van Nistelrooij; 5) it is important to have an approach at local, regional and EU level and the debate should take account of this pooled approach; 6) there needs to be balanced development of big cities and the regions, and an inclusive approach needs to be implemented for territorial entities; 7) the important thing in regional policy is the new impetus given to rural regions; and 8) the new EU member states' efforts to adapt will have a huge influence when adjusting regional powers. (G.B.)