Newsletter – n°20 – March 2013

Headlines

It was certainly all sewn up that local and regional governments and their organisations would be honoured at the Committee of the Regions. However, it must be noted that the third edition of the Assises of decentralised cooperation ended on a high note.

The closing plenary session was indeed marked by a series of speeches which were more than encouraging in terms of the vision of European institutions regarding the commitment of local and regional governments in development.

Joseph Costello, Irish Minister for Development and External Trade, representing the EU Presidency, stated the need of working with local and regional authorities in partner countries and in Europe in order to eradicate poverty. He reminded the role LRAs play in coordinating with civil society and the private sector, and in the citizens’ ownership of development policies. Mr. Costello also insisted on the role played by local government associations in knowledge transfer.

Some announcements concerning the Communication on local and regional authorities in development were made during the event and they were well received. The Communication should, among other things, confirm the role of local and regional authorities as a genuine partner for the European Commission, and should also emphasise a territorial approach to development which will place local and regional governments at the heart of the implementation of development policies.

These announcements confirm that the messages PLATFORMA has delivered for several years, but especially at the end of the consultation in the autumn of 2012, were taken into consideration by the Commission.  Furthermore, Commissioner Piebalgs recognised the work realised by PLATFORMA in this respect.

However, the situation calls for caution, as the Communication is not yet published. These encouraging words still have to materialise, not only in the official document but also on the field.

The day before, Pierre Schapira, Deputy Mayor of Paris and Paul Ortega, Director of the Basque Cooperation Agency, both representing PLATFORMA, voiced their hope that the Communication has a real echo in the different geographic and thematic programmes, as well as on the way development policies are conceived by the different European institutions and implemented by the delegations.

This crucial element is far from being obvious at the moment: Hubert Julien-Laferrière, rapporteur of the roundtable on the post-2015 development framework, co-organised by the Region of Catalonia and PLATFORMA, expressed his regret that local and regional governments are altogether absent from the Communication presenting the elements of the common EU approach on the post-2015 development framework.