Irish Regions Office Website

June 25, 2008

Call for better social exclusion indicators in planning

Separately, a report adopted in the European Parliament plenary session of 17 June on the impact of Cohesion Policy on the integration of vulnerable communities and groups has voiced concerns that some of European society’s most vulnerable populations are being ignored by the aggregated statistical methods typically employed in programming and planning. To avoid the continuance of extreme intra-regional imbalances, the MEPs’ report asks the Commission and Member States to elaborate long-term integrated territorial development programmes which better recognise and specifically address the needs of those areas most at risk of social exclusion due to problems such as isolation, low levels of education, high unemployment, old industries, segregated minorities, insufficient administrative capacity, infrastructure deficit, poor access to services, and deteriorating housing conditions. The EP resolution adopting the report calls on the Commission “to carefully examine the extent to which new quantifiable development indicators in addition to GDP per capita, such as social indicators, should also be used in order to identify the most vulnerable communities and groups and their location, reveal disparities between and within regions, evaluate implementation and policy efficiency and be used as guidance for development planning.” Such actions would underpin targeted and systematic measures involving regional and local authorities, economic and social partners, and NGOs, says the report. This initiative ties in with the Commission’s forthcoming Green Paper on Territorial Cohesion which is expected to define the concept, the criteria determining it, its instruments and the means available for achieving territorial targets. http://www.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/file.jsp?id=5531202

Posted by iroronan at June 25, 2008 04:49 PM