Brussels 9-12 October 2006: For four days 4000 delegates from 30 different countries and 135 regions and cities converge on the EU's headquarters. They line up outside the Commission's newly renovated suite of buildings to take a snapshot of their visit, but most of all they are there to highlight what they, or more particularly, their region or city, can do.
In the cacophony of voices and claims only the most forthright prevail. Their primary target is the secretariat of the Directorate-General for Regional Policy as well as the Committee of the Regions (CoR) the elected committee of regional politicians, for these two together with the regions themselves, are the three groups that organise the Open Days – The European Week of Regions and Cities – as it officially is known. Eventually they will also become the key partners in securing the transfer of fiscal-resources to the regions, or what is often termed the Structural Funds in EU-terminology. More details of this process are provided in the previous issue of Journal of Nordregio, no. 2 -2006.
It is the third year running that this massive EU regional event has been undertaken. It is now more popular than ever. The many thousands of delegates participate in and organise seemingly countless seminars. In fact, a total of some 115 such events, with more than 320 presentations, were undertaken in the many meeting-rooms around Brussels' Schumann metro-station. At least 21 of these have the words innovation or innovative in their titles. In fact, innovation is undoubtedly this years' buzzword. Moreover, most of the seminars were over-subscribed and filled well in advance.
In addition, public cooperation with financial institutions is one of the central features of the year, launched under the headings Jesper, Jeremie and Jessica.
Subsidises to farmers and money for rural development still constitute the largest transfer from the EU-
commission in Brussels to the Member States, some 46 percent of the 2007-2013 budget. At the end of this period, it is however foreseen that regional transfers will outstrip all other budget lines, with help to agriculture and rural development decreasing. This is perhaps why DG Regio has begun to compare their activities to US-led 'Marshall-Aid' to Europe after World War II.
It is, moreover, not unthinkable that regional funding will displace agriculture and rural development at the pinnacle of EU spending before the new budgetary period is over. While agriculture and rural development will receive close to 400 billion euros from the EU in the next seven years, Ms Danuta Hübner, the EU's Commissioner for Regional Development, boasts of the creation of 400 regional programmes representing 500 billion euros in the period 2007-2013. – That is 350 billion from the Community and 150 billion from national public and private sources, she notes.
– Foremost we hope to get sustainable jobs out of these transfers, adding further that sustainable jobs are, jobs that are to stay in Europe and not to be transferred to low-cost countries in Asia. However, Michel Delebarre, who is a regional politician and the president of the EU's Committee of the Regions, cannot afford such limitations. As the Mayor of Dunkirk, a French port with high unemployment, he underlines that any new job is a good job. The issue of sustainability, when it comes to jobs at least, is obviously not on his agenda.
By Odd Iglebaek