"Europe is built on cohesion!". With these meaningful words, Apostolos Tzitzikostas, President of the European Committee of the Regions (CoR), opened this past Monday the 2020 plenary session of the European Committee of the Regions. The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen then strengthened Tzitzikostas’s statement with the desire for a common vision to face the future.
As Apostolos Tzitzikostas repeatedly emphasized during the opening session that “local authorities and regions are our stable foundations - the roof is Europe, the walls are the national governments. Without foundations, no house can stand!".
With this metaphor, the President of the CoR is delivering a hopeful message addressing not only the Member States but also our generation and the ones to come. He asserted that we live in a period where solidarity has become a top priority, even though it has long been a fundamental value for Europe. Cohesion funds are a unique tool which has helped citizens in the European Union for almost 40 years. In this pandemic, cohesion is more vital than ever. Still, Tzitzikostas highlighted the fact that, due to the wide disparities between cities and regions, we should launch campaigns dedicated to how to facilitate cohesion today; we should organise annual forums to discuss allocated budgets and to establish a permanent exchange between member states.
The President of the CoR announced a new report which has gathered the findings of the impact of COVID-19 on our regions and local authorities and will continue to monitor the situation - the Annual and Regional Barometer. Far from seeing this crisis as inevitable, this new normality should push us to be better prepared for the future: democracy should be stronger going forward! Several examples to illustrate this point were given, including helping workers directly exposed to the virus, reinforcing health systems, helping the regions which have been most affected by the ecological transition - such as coalmining regions - using data to understand the resilience, etc. Tzitzikostas assured the attendees that “cooperation is crucial for the sustainability of the European project!” Within a reduced assembly – most of the participants followed the session online to respect the social distancing measures - the President of the CoR appeared to inspire a great deal of hope.
Tzitzitokas and his vision of a more democratic Europe
The President declared his willingness to work on improving trust among the 27 member states, firstly via a more direct connection with the population through local authorities. Local authorities should be the facilitators between Europe and its decision-making processes and the more down-to-earth concerns of people, emphasizing that trust in local authorities in Europe is high.
According to him, Europeans need to be more involved in politics. For instance, he argues that: "Young people who fight for the climate should be invited to discuss the future of Europe. We want a deep democratic representation and fewer administrative steps to finally arrive at a sustainable and prosperous Europe, in which our health is the top priority!”.
Ursula von der Leyen : « a fragile but diverse Europe »
Coming from a federal state, the German President of the European Commission strongly believes in the role of local policies. She emphasized the fact that they help to manage the major challenges of our time and this was particularly evident during the pandemic, where local authorities were on the front line of the fight against Covid-crisis. While the emergency put under the spotlight a fragmented Europe’s fragility, it also showed the preponderant strength of the local authorities’ actions. Von der Leyen dwelled on the crucial link established between population and local governments – which was clearly highlighted by the Barometer: “Their actions made European citizens feel that they were not alone”. Nonetheless, some mistakes have also been made. As she pointed out “this crisis has tested our cohesion and not all the countries have the same financial systems”. She showed what Europe has done for the Regions in response to this very crisis: EU has acted with a revamped budget for the next generations, a fair chance to overcome the crisis and modernize the system. Europe has implemented the REACT-EU – “Recovery Assistance for Cohesion and the Territories of Europe” – to provide liquidity to SMEs for instance. The same goes for the health system.
Two main points were raised by her and Mr. Tzitzikostas: the necessity of a greener Europe and the digital revolution in our daily life. Concerning sustainable development in Europe, she stressed the necessity to share ideas between Europe and its population: “the EU next generation will only succeed if we work as a team and we play a collective game!”. Europe knows the fact that most Europeans share a greener vision for the future. Therefore, in the case of resources for the European Green Deal, the financial resources will come from Europe, but the ideas will be developed by the citizens! Moreover, to reduce energy consumption, a wave of renovations should be considered, especially in public buildings such as schools.
Von der Leyen also underlined how the pandemic has revealed the power of data and digital impact on the life. NextGeneration EU is the chance of extending high speed Internet also to the smallest cities, which are often poorly served. In Europe, many projects have been launched such as the creation of a hub for digital innovation in the Danube area where companies can flourish in discovering the relevancy of data and intelligence artificial. However, it becomes crucial to design a “European cloud”, a neutral data space where the Member States can exchange their data and where innovation is favoured. She concluded with the desire for Europe to build a tailor-made future for the regions, a hope also shared by Tzitzikostas.
To conclude, Kieran McCarthy, a member of the CoR and local politician in Ireland, shares this European vision of cohesion and clearly summed up this European philosophy via video link: : “we are more than the sum of the opinions we produce, we exceed the sum, we are the ones who give the ideas…” and this is the strength of Europe.
By Perrine Dor, Belgium
