COMMITTEE OF THE REGIONS : 2011 PRIORITIES: COHESION, CITIZENS' INITIATIVE, SUBSIDIARITY.

Mercedes Bresso, the president of the EU's Committee of the Regions (CoR), intends to make 2011 the year when "we live up to all the promises made in the Lisbon Treaty". She says that in the editorial published in the lastest CoR newsletter(1), which sets out the areas on which she intends to work in the coming months. According to Bresso, there are three particularly important issues: territorial cohesion, the citizens' initiative and keeping a check on the subsidiarity principle.

On territorial cohesion: "We will thus continue trying to ensure that a regional policy for all Europe's regions is maintained and will call for territorial impact analyses before and after the adoption of new Community legislation," says Bresso. On the citizens' initiative: "We know that our regions can play a role in initiating, mediating and coordinating such initiatives. The Committee of the Regions will therefore work together with the European Parliament to simplify access to this new instrument so that as many people as possible can take advantage of it."

On subsidiarity, the idea is "to minimise use of the coercive' aspect" - ie taking matters to the EU Court of Justice. The Lisbon Treaty offers this option to the CoR, which has already threatened to do so in connection with the 'Europe 2020' strategy. Instead of that, the idea is to ensure that territorial authorities are at least involved upstream of legislative proposals.

"We will go further than our partners' speeches and promises however encouraging they are by ensuring that the Structural Funds are not held hostage to an exclusively intergovernmental approach," says Bresso. The president of the CoR promises that she will put these issues on the agenda of upcoming discussions with the European Commission in the context of the cooperation agreement that binds the two institutions, which is to be reviewed this year.

Key events

The biggest event in 2011 for the CoR will be the Open Days - a European week of regions and towns - which will take place from 10 to 13 October in Brussels. But the programme of events for representatives of towns and regions is far from being restricted to this now traditional event. Here is a little snapshot of the CoR's main events in 2011:

- It begins on 26 January with, still in Brussels, a forum on The regional and local authorities in action during the European Year of Volunteering 2011', organised together with the European Commission's DG Communication. It will, in...