How to be present?” “

The more active participation of the European Regions and local authorities in the EU decision-making process is one the issues concerning the future institutional system of an enlarged Europe. The ‘Napolitano Report’. The European Parliament recently approved Giorgio Napolitano’s Report on the “role of the regional and local authorities in European construction”, which ideally completes the Report of the French MEP and member of the Convention Alain Lamassoure on the distribution of powers between the European Union and the member states. Lamassoure’s report was a basic point of reference for the Convention’s work on the application of the principle of subsidiarity and the definition of “who does what” in the new architecture of the Union. The Napolitano Report, for its part, is based on two main assumptions: first, the need for the EU to formulate “new methods of participation that recognize the key role of the regional and local authorities in the process of preparing Community decisions and implementing the Union’s policies” and, second, the conviction that “the request of the regional and local authorities to reinforce their role in the decision-making process must be interpreted and satisfied without calling into question the institutional balance on which the success of the Community and the Union has so far been based”. Both the law and consolidated practice – says the Report – make it advisable to abandon the “hierarchical and pyramidal conception of the Union’s institutional system”, by favouring a “greater participation of the regional and local authorities in the European decision-making process, beginning from the phase of preparing EU policies and legislative provisions”. The document however does not endorse the federalist thesis according to which the future European Constitution ought to enable the Regions – and in particular those endowed with high-level jurisdictional and administrative powers -, in matters that fall within their direct competence and on specific questions that concern them, to participate in the meetings of the Council of Ministers (as is the case of the Laender in Germany and in Austria and of the Regions in Belgium). Reinforcing the participation of the Regions. Napolitano’s approach, by contrast, follows the position already expressed by Giuliano Amato, Vice-President of the Convention, according to which it is up to the member states “in the context of their constitutional provisions, to reinforce the internal mechanisms for the participation of the Regions and territorial bodies, in particular those endowed with legislative powers, in the whole process by which the will of the State in the fields of European affairs of more specific interest to them is formed”. According to the Report, neither Europe, still less the States and Regions, would derive any advantage from inadequate regional representation in European decision-making organs: it is within each State that the decision must be taken how to be present in Europe. In this regard, the Report advises against the elevation of the Committee of the Regions from a consultative body to an EU Institution, but stresses that it remains nonetheless the natural seat for safeguarding regional interests at Community level. Indeed, the Report goes so far as to recommend that the new constitutional Treaty ought to give the Committee of the Regions the power to start legal proceedings before the European Court of Justice. Finally, the document hopes for a closer collaboration between the regional Assemblies and the European Parliament and invites the Convention on the future of Europe to take steps to ensure that linguistic diversity and cross-border cooperation be safeguarded and promoted in the Treaty. Report on the session in SirEurope next week.