Irish Regions Office Website

October 29, 2008

National-Regional Governance & Project Partnerships

A European Parliament report on governance and partnership in Regional Policy, adopted on 21 October, has stressed that regional and local partners should be more extensively involved, in planning and implementing regional
development projects. To provide the practical solutions that citizens expect on issues such as social housing the 'Beaupuy Report' urges national authorities to step up their use of the ''integrated approach'' to policy making
and to involve local partners from the planning stage to completion, so as to make better use of their experience and
know-how and to enhance effectiveness, efficiency, legitimacy and transparency. It also urges Member States to establish public-private partnerships to implement Structural Fund activities under the Operational Programmes and to provide all actors with the means to implement good governance.

The report advises that to succeed, multilevel governance needs to take a ''bottomup'' approach whereby local and regional authorities must step up their co-operation with national governments and the Commission. Equally, Member States are urged to decentralise both the legislative and budgetary implementation of Cohesion Policy in keeping with the subsidiarity principle. The report calls on the Commission, Member States and regional and local authorities to help integrate the management of all community funding for regional and urban development (structural funds, R&D support, and the European agricultural fund for rural development) in order to better exploit and co-ordinate these instruments. As part of Commission efforts to spearhead the introduction of modern governance practices a practical guide and an 'Erasmus-style' training and exchange programme for local and regional representatives are also proposed.

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/activities/committees/reportscom.do?language=en&body=regi

Posted by iroronan at October 29, 2008 10:15 AM