The President of the PES Group in the CoR and President of the Umbria region, Catiuscia Marini, intervened today at the opening session of the 14th edition of the European Week of Regions and Cities, debating cohesion policy as the main investment policy for the EU's regions and cities. Among the key speakers were the European Commissioner for Regional Policy, Corina Crețu, the European Parliament's Vice-President, Ramon Luis Valcárcel, and the Slovak government's Plenipotentiary for support of least developed regions, Anton Marcinčin.
Taking the floor in response to Commissioner Crețu's intervention, Catiuscia Marini voiced the Group's concerns about the possible suspension of structural funds to Portugal and Spain. "The CoR has always firmly opposed the introduction of a macro-economic conditionality: you can't take the EU investment away from cities and regions for policies pursued by national governments. As local and regional authorities, we can assure that macro-conditionality is not a positive incentive and does not encourage us to do better - on the contrary, it only hampers their investment capacity".
Commenting on a statement of European Commission vice-President Jyrki Katainen who had argued on 4 October that "the regional and national levels forme together one single economy", she went on reminding that "there is no single national economy, but many economic and structural differences between regions which you can't address by a one-size-fits-all approach".
This year’s European Week of Regions and Cities is co-organised by the European Commission and the Committee of the Regions under the title "Regions and cities for sustainable and inclusive growth".
