Newsletter – n°18 – January 2013

News from the Secretariat

Pierre Schapira, Hans Janssen and Jean-Noël Gaultier met Corina Cretu, MEP and vice-president of the Development Committee, in order to discuss her report on local and regional authorities (LRAs) and civil society organisations (CSOs) in development.

Pierre Schapira, Deputy Mayor of Paris and political representative of PLATFORMA, Hans Janssen, Mayor of Oisterwijk (Netherlands) and Jean-Noël Gaultier, Vice-president of region Pays de la Loire (France), defended the PLATFORMA proposals in three domains: support to decentralisation, capacity building for local and regional governments in partner countries and the role of LRAs in the post-2015 agenda.

The three elected representatives argued in favour of the EU considering support to decentralisation a priority for public sector reforms in partner countries. In this respect, they called upon the EU to reinforce national associations of local governments, which play a crucial role in supporting the reforms.

They reminded Mrs. Cretu that decentralised cooperation has very good results in terms of transfer of expertise, and they called for this tool to be supported by all the geographic and thematic programmes of the Commission.

Finally, they encouraged the definition of governance and the respect of fundamental rights as horizontal objectives of the post-2015 agenda.

This meeting was preceded by a wider meeting between Corina Cretu and LRA organisations.

On this occasion, PLATFORMA had the opportunity of presenting the positions communicated to MEPs last spring concerning the 2014-2020 programming; the network particularly reiterated its concerns related to the decision of concentrating European aid in three sectors per country, and argued in favour of a greater participation of LRAs in the definition and implementation of EU programmes.

Among the important points concerning the LRA-CSO cooperation, the PLATFORMA representatives desired a close collaboration of the two stakeholders in the domain of development education, in order to raise awareness of European citizens on development issues.

Finally, PLATFORMA called for the territorial approach to be considered complementary to the sector approach, and to implement, in partner countries, programmes inspired by the cohesion and structural funds experience.

The report, which should be presented at the end of May during the Committee meeting, will represent the unique response of the Parliament to the two European Commission Communications, on local and regional authorities, to be published in April 2013, and on civil society organisations, published in October 2012.

The meeting with MEP Corina Cretu was made possible by the support of the Association of Romanian Municipalities.