[autom.vertaling] Goedkeuring door het Comité van de regio's van het Handvest voor Multilevel Governance in Europa (en)

Met dank overgenomen van Comité van de Regio's (CvdR) i, gepubliceerd op donderdag 3 april 2014.

With the launch of the European election campaign only a few weeks away, the Committee of the Regions (CoR) is working to defend its ideas on European governance and adopted today the Charter for Multilevel Governance in Europe. At a time when the European Union (EU) is moving into a new political cycle as well as in a new programming period for major European policies, the CoR intends to remind people that it is only by involving regions and cities further in policy design that a successful implementation and assessment of EU policies can be guaranteed.

The Charter urges public authorities to make a political commitment to implementing the values, principles and mechanisms of multilevel governance. Mainly addressing local and regional authorities, the idea is to lead the way by example:

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    By signing up to the Charter, towns and regions will undertake to make use of the potential of multilevel governance in the management of public policies, to launch initiatives and projects in partnership with different levels of authority (territorial, national and European), to develop territorial cooperation instruments and to modernise their administration along the lines of the charter;
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    The Charter also aims to make other levels of authority (European institutions, national governments and international organisations) aware of the added value of this type of governance when pursuing policy action. This is all part of the CoR's continued commitment to ensuring application of the subsidiarity principle.

Mercedes Bresso (PES/IT), CoR first vice-President, stated: "This Charter also refers to the situations we are experiencing in our respective Member States, where the achievements of regionalisation and decentralisation may be called into question. It points out the need for us to rally forces so as to defend the powers and responsibilities of the different levels of governance in national constitutions, as well as respect for subsidiarity."

Luc Van den Brande (EPP/BE), who initiated the project and was rapporteur for the White Paper on multilevel governance and the follow-up opinion thereto, stressed: "Decision-making is becoming scattered, and top-down decisions are simply no longer acceptable in our European democracy. Multilevel governance offers a participatory answer by providing tools for full participation also to regions, cities, and ultimately, the citizens. This is the only way to achieve our objectives for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth, for jobs and a hopeful future. In one word: to deliver better and more for the citizens by making it together.

As chair of the CoR's institutional and external affairs commission, António Costa (PES/PT), Mayor of Lisbon, underlined the importance of asserting the principles of the charter to strengthen the legitimacy of the decision-making process and also to "guarantee the practice of good governance and effective policies". Herwig Van Staa (EPP/AT), chair of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe, noted that "The various countries cannot be steered by a single level of authority. When speaking of multilevel governance, we implicitly acknowledge that no government has a monopoly on authority and decision-making."

Multilevel governance in practice

The principles underlying multilevel governance advocated in the Charter, namely subsidiarity and partnership, are reflected in instruments and processes which promote the participation of various stakeholders in decision-making. These principles are essential for efficient policy implementation. They have been enshrined in the new provisions of the European cohesion policy (Article 5 - Partnership and multi-level governance) and can be seen, inter alia, in:

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    partnership contracts which, as part of the EU's new cohesion policy, will have to be set up by Member States in conjunction with all socio-economic and institutional players, including local and regional authorities;
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    the obligation now on Member States, as part of the implementation of the Europe 2020 Strategy, to involve territorial authorities in preparing national reform programmes;
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    the European grouping for territorial cooperation, the legal instrument for territorial cooperation in the EU, which allows cities and regions in the different Member States to manage cross-border, trans-national and interregional cooperation measures;
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    various examples at regional level, such as the contrat de projet État-Région (State-Region project contract) in France, which allows the government to agree with a region on the implementation of projects relating to regional spatial development projects. Other public partners (départements, urban communities, etc.) may also be involved.

Signature campaign

Europe Day, 9 May 2014, will mark the launch of the campaign to acquire signatures to

the Charter; it will be put on line and open for electronic signature by cities and regions on www.cor.europa.eu/mlgcharter. Institutions and high profile political figures will be called upon to express official support.

At the origin of the initiative

With its 2009 White Paper on Multilevel governance, the CoR launched a consultation

process for drafting a charter on multilevel governance in order to include a common and shared understanding of European governance in the core values of the European Union. After public consultation, the CoR renewed this commitment in its opinion entitled: Building a European culture of multilevel governance: follow-up to the Committee of the Regions' White Paper. Since that time, it has been actively developing a method for monitoring usage of multilevel governance by European institutions, regularly produces a scoreboard on the subject, and is working on compiling good multilevel governance practices in cooperation with the European Commission.

Additional information:

The Committee of the Regions

The Committee of the Regions is the EU's assembly of regional and local representatives from all 28 Member States. Its mission is to involve regional and local authorities and the communities they represent in the EU's decision-making process and to inform them about EU policies. The European Commission, the European Parliament and the Council are obliged to consult the Committee in policy areas affecting regions and cities. It can appeal to the EU Court of Justice if its rights are infringed or it believes that an EU law infringes the subsidiarity principle or fails to respect regional or local powers.

Contact:

Nathalie Vandelle

Tél. +32 2 282 24 99