Florence, 16/03/2009 (Agence Europe) - The annual General Assembly of the Forum of Global Associations of Regions (FOGAR) was held in Florence on Thursday 12 and Friday 13 March 2009 at the invitation of Claudio Martini, President of the Tuscany region and of FOGAR. The meeting brought together around 20 regional representatives from five continents as well as several organisations based on the regional theme.
Abdourahim Agne, the Senegalese minister for spatial planning and decentralised cooperation, briefed the gathering on the partnership platform project established by UNDP in the regions of West Africa. The platform was created due to the “lack of policy to mobilise populations at supranational level”, Mr Agne said. The vacuum must be filled by regional cohesion policies at several levels, the establishment of a crossborder zone and the elimination of borders, especially to face up to the environmental and climate programmes that go beyond geographical boundaries.
One of the main problems encountered by Africa and Europe is immigration. Africa must find a way to keep its young population on the African continent as “if they come to Europe, that is the beginning of the problems”. The programme seeks to conduct a real spatial territorial policy, an approach that must not be undertaken by individual countries as this is a long term process that costs too much, often 25 years, Mr Agne stressed. However, “the problem must be urgently resolved in Africa”, he said. The final objective of the platform would be to “help regions to help themselves”.
Mr Agne told EUROPE that cooperation is working well between Africa and Europe and that results are significant given the relatively low means available. European funds remain, however, difficult to obtain. The process is “very complicated, very bureaucratic and very long and it is not possible to wait such a long while”, he said. His solution to this would be for the “European Union to dust up its procedures to make them more transparent with greater awareness of the real situation in our regions”.
Klaus Klipp, General Secretary of the Assembly of European Regions (AER), suggested to FOGAR member regions that they should speak to him so that he might give an example of how cooperation works: “That may help one to see how one manages networks between regions”, he said.
Marie-Ange Orihuela, who is at the head of the general secretariat of the CPMR (Conference of Peripheral Maritime Regions) presented the European Commission's communication on the programme entitled “non-state actors and local authorities in development” (ANEAL). The programme has been a “nightmare” to date as development aid was initially conceived for non-governmental organisations and not for local authorities. The latter were used to asking for funding from their governments but today they must do so at European level and procedures and practices are different, Ms Orihuela told EUROPE. Local authorities must therefore readjust but the European Union also must understand the real situation with regards local authorities as, before, it was more used to NGOs, she explained. She did go on to reassure, however, that approaches remain highly concerted, all the more as the context of the crisis means that funds will decline and that they will go to the most effective candidates - hence regions must learn to be more effective. The first stage of the ANEAL programme was official recognition of local authorities and regions by the Commission. In 2010, the “mid term review” for 2008-2010 budgetary perspectives will take place and allow the second phase of the programme to begin - implementation of the projects. Ms Orihuela said that funds, however, must be all the more multilateral, following the principles of the Paris declaration on aid efficiency. (E.M./transl.jl)