This year I am celebrating my 1oth anniversary as a member of the Committee of the Regions (CoR.) As Mayor of Dunkirk since 1989 and president of the Regional Council of Nord-Pas-de-Calais between 1998 and 2001, I have been involved in the shaping of Europe’s priorities from two different perspectives, the regional and the municipal, which puts me in a good position to try to take stock of the past 10 years of European regional and local policy.
It seems to me that both the substance and the form of EU policy have changed in the past decade. In 1998, the CoR was still in its infancy, the political arena was dominated by calls for institutional representation, particularly from regions, and the catchphrase on many people’s lips was still “Europe of the regions.” In fact, it is because of this catchphrase that the CoR was given a rather misleading name. It is not a Committee in the usual sense of the word: it is a political assembly of elected representatives. Neither is it a body which represents only regions, since its mandate extends beyond Europe’s 270 regions to all the 150,000 local and regional authorities in the European Union. However, it was not just that the phrase “Europe of the regions” did not fully reflect Europe’s territorial diversity. There are two further reasons why it is now largely inappropriate.
One is that the wording in some senses contradicted the principle of subsidiarity, in that the processes of decentralisation and regionalisation are now taking place along diverse paths and at different speeds in different countries. For example, in France, where decentralisation has not actually made much progress in recent years, it is difficult to comprehend the situation in Germany, where decentralisation has developed to such an extent that during the last reform of the federal structure in 2006, the regions were able to agree to cede back a number of powers in the area of European policy in exchange for being accorded other powers. The slogan also took time to catch on because it seemed to be at odds with the extension of the European Parliament’s powers. However, unlike in the early 1990s, there is now no longer any question of establishing a “Senate of the Regions.”
Furthermore, once the Treaty of Lisbon comes into force, Europe’s local and regional authorities will no longer need to call for further institutional representation in the medium term, since they will have obtained almost everything they have been striving for, in particular the inclusion of territorial cohesion among the objectives of the Union, the establishment of respect for local and regional self-government, and the new dimension accorded to the principle of subsidiarity, which gives the CoR the right to bring an action before the Court of Justice where it believes that European legislation is in breach of the principle or its own rights are being infringed. Now that the call for institutional representation, which was largely spearheaded by the regions, is no longer topical, there is no reason for the dichotomy between regions and municipalities to exist at European level.
Regions and municipalities have unquestionably benefited hugely from 20 years of cohesion and single market policy. However, they have also been drawn into an increasingly restrictive “competitive” struggle. A balance now needs to be found at European level between respect for local and regional self-government and regulating inter-regional competition by working towards territorial cohesion. Regions and municipalities must also come together to make their presence felt in the current discussions on legislation and major issues that will shape Europe’s future from 2010, in the case of the revision of the European Growth Strategy, and from 2013 in the case of the future of the EU budget and therefore also of the cohesion policy. This will necessitate closer involvement in decision-making on legislative proposals, exchanges of best practice in relation to the implementation of Community programmes and the development of partnership networks.
Nowadays, who would challenge the need for regions and municipalities to be fully involved in the decisions on implementing policies on issues such as the control of energy consumption, transport and the future challenges facing our cities? The CoR is forging ahead with these ambitions, in particularly through the OPEN DAYS European Week of Regions and Cities, which is a real sounding board for our territories, regions, municipalities and districts.