Unfortunately we didn’t really have time to discuss the Regional Development chapter in detail in Strasbourg as there wasn’t any finalized draft before the meeting to discuss. As this is a new chapter, there we’re no old text to fall back on. There was some people who took the time to work on the topic in a smaller setting, which they then continued working on after the meeting. The result, a first draft for a chapter on regional development, is included below.
Please feel free to suggest changes and improvements in this thread.
Regional Development
We believe regional development is crucial in promoting economic growth and improving citizen’s quality of life. Regional policy has a direct impact on people’s lives, especially since there are still large social and economic imbalances between European regions, both in the EU and non-EU countries. To create a more just and united Europe, regional development should be a priority, based on principles of equity, participation, and ecological responsibility.
Regions, and even more so border-regions, often face very specific challenges, such as environmental damages due to climate change, de-industrialisation due to economic crisis, difficulty to access healthcare and education, as well as demographic changes.
Regional development should help European regions with the green transition. In order to ensure policies are sustainable and environmentally responsible, we support the financing of projects that promote the transition to a low-carbon economy, respecting climate targets.
We also recognize the importance of the digital transition of European regions. The emphasis should be on promoting digital innovation in regional development. We therefore support connectivity projects, which provide access to digital infrastructure, such as high-speed internet and telecommunication networks, across all regions.
Because European regions are often spreading across borders, we also believe regional policies play an important role in the development of regional transport projects. Therefore, we support the deployment of transnational transport projects that improve connections to and in less development regions, such as high-speed railways.
To achieve this, we call for an increase in the EU budget for regional development to help regions reduce disparities and foster cross-border cooperation. Supporting sustainable economic and social growth of European regions should be the EU’s main investment area. The funds intended for regional development should be primarily used for long-term investments, whereas separate crisis management funds should provide timely short-term crisis support in times of need.
To allow for bottom up decision making in our societies, regional authorities should be more empowered to develop their own local policy strategies using on their unique strengths and resources. Regional authorities should also be more involved in the legislative process when it concerns their development. To this end, we encourage cooperation of local representatives through EU platforms dealing with regional policy. We also strive to direct public funds as much as possible to regional authorities for distribution to local-led initiatives.
Given the limited administrative capacity of regional authorities, we understand the need to reduce the amount of bureaucracy needed for getting access to public funds and ask for additional financing to be allocated for technical assistance to develop and report on large-scale and innovative projects. The funds and their allocation to projects should be based on concrete data to provide evidence-based decision-making.
However, this should not hamper the urgent need to improve transparency of end beneficiaries of public funds. This is crucial to avoid conflict of interests, fraud and corruption. At regional level, project evaluation criteria as well as the implementation requirements should be objective and transparent. EU funds under shared management by Member States are particularly at risk of being abused because of the lack of information shared between the regional, national and EU levels. That is why we suggest; making full use of interoperable digital tools used for budgetary control and publishing no
n-sensitive data on all public procurements, including the implementation reports on projects. Only full transparency will allow the public and the media investigators to follow the money in order to identify potential cases of abuse.
We also believe that regional development policies must be guided by the principles of social justice and inclusivity. This means that rules for the distribution of EU funds to regions should always comply with the Charter of Fundamental rights, Rule of Law and the European code of conduct. All citizens should have equal access to the benefits of regional development policies, and that these policies should be designed to reduce inequality and promote social cohesion.
Finally, regional development policies must be based on active citizen participation and democracy. This means involving citizens in the decision-making process and empowering them to shape the policies that affect their lives.