Brussels, 22/05/2008 (Agence Europe) - While welcoming the public consultation exercise on the future of the European Union's strategy for the outermost regions (ORs), the report by Margie Sudre (EPP-ED, France) entitled “EU Strategy for the outermost regions: achievements and future prospects” provides a number of recommendations on the main activities: agriculture, fisheries, trade, transport and centres of excellence. The European Parliament adopted the report, by 592 votes to 70, with 22 abstentions, in Strasbourg on Tuesday 20 May.
The main calls from Parliament are that: (1) EU action, and this includes public/private partnerships, should be a catalyst for a spirit of enterprise that will transform the ORs into centres of excellence driven by sectors which fully exploit their advantages and know-how, such as waste management, renewable energy, energy self-sufficiency, biodiversity, student mobility, research into climate change and crisis management; (2) Community support for agriculture in the ORs should be debated extensively in order to identify the real challenges, the need to move towards local self-sufficiency, farm income levels, support for producers' organisations in the marketing of their products, the importance of the environmental dimension and the need to take account of the effects of the opening up of trade through economic partnership agreements (EPAs) and the free trade agreements currently being negotiated with several Latin American regions; (3) ORs should be placed at the heart of EU maritime policy, and the debate on this issue should focus on the role they can play on the sustainable use of the seas, oceans and coastal areas, and international maritime governance; (4) ways of overcoming the narrowness of local markets, the increasingly open competitive environment and the difficulty of finding market outlets in mainland European markets or in their respective geographical areas and of improving the coordination of the European Regional Development Fund/European Development Fund (ERDF/EDF) and the European Regional Development Fund/Development Cooperation Instrument (ERDF/DCI) for funding cooperation projects with neighbouring countries, should also be priorities for debate, together with effective participation by the ORs in European policies to promote innovation and overcome the digital divide in order to ensure full access for the inhabitants of these regions to the means of information and communication offered by the new technologies, including broadband internet access.
Parliament also calls on the Commission, Council and other EU institutions concerned to efficiently and adequately and effectively ensure future Community funding of the Union's strategy to assist ORs and the compensation of handicaps linked to their outermost status.
Elsewhere, MEPs regret the initial reluctance shown by DG Trade to take into account the specific characteristics of the outermost regions when negotiating EPAs and urge the Commission to continue to seek compromises that respect the interests of the ORs concerned, when it comes to reaching final agreements with the ACP countries. They are concerned at some of the measures proposed by the Commission in the transport sector, particularly the assessment of specific needs and the taking into account of environmental externalities, and reiterate the need for the ORs to be given differential treatment in this area, particularly as regards the inclusion of civil aviation in the Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) system, so as not to jeopardise the efforts made to overcome their accessibility deficit. They also underline the importance of public services for the economic, social and territorial cohesion of ORs, particularly in the air and maritime transport, postal, energy and communications sectors.
With more particular regard to centres of excellence, an amendment was adopted in plenary session calling for the efforts made so far to be pursued to put in place local research mechanisms that will allow potential to be fulfilled, and to support and assist attractive, effective and well funded universities that are equally good as the universities in mainland Europe, says an EP press release.
Speaking about the plenary session adoption of her report, Sudre, elected to represent the island of Reunion, said she hoped it would make a contribution to reflection on a better strategy for ORs after 2013. She said that this strategy had to make the most of the assets of ORs. She spoke about renewable energy (solar, geothermic, etc), biodiversity, agricultural research and waste management. In response to a question from EUROPE, she acknowledged that the outermost regions bore the greatest responsibility for making good use of European funding, and that, too often still, they preferred actions that did not bring development or massive projects, like the construction of a light railway in Reunion. (G.B./O.L.)