COMMITTEE OF THE REGIONS : NEW EU STRATEGY: REGIONS WANT TO BE PARTNERS.

With just a few weeks to go before the spring European Council, which will focus on the future of the growth and employment strategy, the President of the Committee of the Regions (CoR), Luc Van den Brande, repeated his request to further involve local authorities in the definition and implementation of the new strategy. During the 5th Territorial dialogue for sustainable growth and employment', held in Palma de Majorca on 18 January, he once again relayed what the CoR has been repeating since 2006: without the cities and regions, which implement decisions on the ground, the Lisbon strategy cannot be successful.

Van den Brande, who recently met the newly-appointed permanent President of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy - the two are old acquaintances, originating from the same country, the same region and the same political party - hopes that he will be able to relay his requests more effectively than he has done to date. Moreover, his speech in Palma de Majorca profusely cited the president of the European Council and his declarations in favour of the greater involvement of regions.

Among the CoR's demands called to mind in Majorca were the following: that member states devote part of their annual progress reports on their reform programmes to the role of local and regional authorities; that the CoR's territorial dialogue for growth and jobs takes an "official" place in the governance of the new Lisbon strategy, as an exchange between the Council Presidency, the European Commission and the EP on the one hand, and the CoR and representatives of EU local and regional authorities on the other; that round tables including all government levels are set in each member state with a view to monitoring the implementation...