Going East: forum over de regionale en lokale dimensies van het EU-Oostelijk partnerschap (en)
COR/09/65
Brussels, 9 June 2009
Going East: Forum on the regional and local dimension of the EU Eastern Partnership
On 16 and 17 June, the Committee of the Regions is organising two days of discussion and debate on the Eastern Partnership to coincide with its own plenary session. This event comes in the wake of the initiative'slaunch on 7 May by the heads of state or government of the 27 EU Member States, their counterparts from Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia, and representatives of the European institutions, including CoR president Luc Van den Brande.
At this forum on 16 and 17 June , the CoR is bringing together institutional and political players, members of civil society, project operators and researchers. The forum is above all designed as an opportunity to share experiences and encourage the launch of local projects with representatives of the Eastern Partnership countries, local and regional authorities, the business world, non-governmental organisations, associations and the European institutions.
A political opening session attended by CoR president Luc Van den Brande and Ambassador Jan Tombinski, Poland's permanent representative to the EU, will be followed by two thematic workshops, one on territorial cohesion and economic development, the other on institution-building and good governance.
The forum is an opportunity for the CoR to reiterate its firm belief that relations between the EU and its eastern neighbours have to be rooted at local and regional level: the primary purpose of the Eastern Partnership must be to facilitate dialogue among citizens. The forum builds on the adoption of a CoR opinion on the Eastern Partnership drafted at the request of the Czech EU presidency by Istvan Sertö-Radics (HU/ALDE), chairman of the CoR Commission for External Relations and Decentralised Cooperation (RELEX), and will draw on the findings of a seminar on the issue organised by the RELEX commission in Košice, Slovakia, on 3 June. On 26 May, the CoR also joined forces with the Association of Local Democracy Agencies (ALDA) to organise a round-table discussion on the role of local and regional authorities in consolidating democracy and institution-building, taking the example of Belarus .
Click here for the forum programme or to take part in the event.
Click here for the CoR opinion on the Eastern Partnership.
Visit the CoR's website : www.cor.europa.eu
The Committee of the Regions
Around two-thirds of EU legislation is implemented by local and regional authorities in the Member States. The Committee of the Regions was created in 1994 to give representatives of local government a say over the content of these laws. The CoR organises five plenary sessions a year, where its 344 members vote on opinions issued in response to proposed legislation. The European Commission, which initiates EU laws, and the Council of Ministers, which determines the final content of the legislation (usually in tandem with the European Parliament), are obliged to consult the CoR on a wide range of policy areas including the environment, employment and transport. The Lisbon Treaty will strengthen the position of the Committee of the Regions further. In future, the Committee must be consulted by the European Parliament on all issues that are important for regions and municipalities. The Committee can also appeal to the EU Court of Justice if its rights are infringed or it believes that an EU law violates the subsidiarity principle or fails to respect regional or local powers.
For more information, please contact:
Chris Jones
Tel. + 32 (0)2 546 87 51
christopher.jones@cor.europa.eu
Michael Alfons
Tel.: +32 (0)2 546 85 59
Athénais Cazalis de Fondouce
Tel. + 32 (0)2 282 24 47
Athenais.CazalisDeFondouce@cor.europa.eu
To read previous press releases, click here .