Your mandate at the head of the Committee of the Regions has just been confirmed. What are your main priorities for the coming thirty months?

Firstly to bring to life the Lisbon Treaty, which introduced important principles for cities, regions and the Committee of the Regions. We are striving to set up the principle of territorial cohesion, subsidiarity control by the CoR, the citizens’ initiative. The CoR is in the process of organising its subsidiarity monitoring network, with cities and regions that “do the groundwork” in order to know how to use this important skill and how to control this principle in the early warning phase. We must learn to manage it, a bit like Parliament did with the budget, by making it a lever, which will allow us to take on a more decisive role at EU level. Our second priority is to help implement and operate the citizens’ initiative. It is necessary to help and inform, otherwise there is a risk of initiatives being launched contrary to national projects or of competences which are not European. And we would be running the risk of seriously disappointing citizens, because the Commission will only be able to note that it cannot do anything. Lastly, content must be given to the principle of territorial cohesion. Its introduction into the Lisbon Treaty was a huge success, but how can we make it effective? The Commission must put forward proposals for future Cohesion Policy, but also for all sectorial policies.

With regard to subsidiarity control, can you really imagine referring to the Court of Justice to ensure that this principle is respected, as the Lisbon Treaty allows you the opportunity to do so?

Yes, if necessary. This is an approach to be considered in order to allow the CoR to be heard. Shall I give you an example? The ‘Europe 2020’ strategy, which makes a mockery of the role of local and regional authorities. We are seriously considering sounding the alarm and committing to an early warning procedure. The treaty having barely been approved, a strategy is launched, which does not respect the principle of subsidiarity! We clearly stated that it is necessary to bear in mind the competences of the regions and local authorities in the ‘Europe 2020’ strategy. If we note that there is excessive disproportion between the reality of our competences and the role given to the states, we will assert our rights.

We attribute to José Manuel Barroso the idea of isolating the European Social Fund from the Structural Fund. Is this correct?

I have had discussions with Commissioner Hahn [regional policy] and José Manuel Barroso, and they told us this, indeed. This is another dossier on which we will be very attentive because, again, the principle of subsidiarity risks being violated. We must see how they anticipate things but, if this results in defining at European level the budget which, in each territory, must be devoted to policies on employment, development, combating climate change, etc, the CoR could consider that the subsidiarity principle has been called into question. Until now, we operated with global budgets and allocation between policies was done on a regional level, according to the demands of the territories. Separating the budgets means taking this competence away from the regions.

Would the idea be to give greater visibility to policies favouring employment?

We told Barroso that it was not necessary to isolate the ESF for this reason. Citizens are highly concerned about unemployment, therefore it is understandable to want to give greater visibility to what the ESF is doing in terms of training, learning and employment. But this does not mean to say that the objective will be reached with separate budgets. There are other ways of achieving it, in particular by calling upon the regions to a greater extent rather than by letting the ESF disappear into national programmes.

How are relations progressing with the other institutions?

We are going to renegotiate the protocol that binds us to the Commission. It must be readapted to the new conditions of the Lisbon Treaty. With Parliament, relations are very good. Things are more difficult with the Council of Ministers, but the Belgian Presidency is beginning. And minister-presidents who are members of the Committee of the Regions will chair Council formations. But we will also show our added value by putting forward concrete proposals. An initial approach could be to propose a sort of Erasmus between the regions at the level of professional training. In my opinion, this is a very interesting idea to increase the mobility of workers in Europe. The idea came from a discussion with my colleagues in Catalonia, who set up such a system. So, we must take advantage of our experiences on the ground and submit them to the EU agenda.