The network grows

Over 5,000 enrolments, representing 212 regions in 33 countries: the Open Days-European Week of Regions and Cities was held from 8 to 11 October. Organized by the Committee of the Regions in partnership with the European Commission, the event has never had such a large participation. It comprised scores of events in Brussels and a hundred or so decentralized events in the various member states. DEVELOPMENT AND SOLIDARITY. The seminars and political debates organized for the Open Days focused on the new regional programmes for the period 2007-2013, under the overall title: “Let’s pass to realization! The regions and cities create growth and employment”. MICHEL DELEBARRE , chairman of the Committee of the Regions and Mayor of Dunkirk (France), who was one of the main supporters of the initiative, explained: “Ever since they were inaugurated in 2003, the Open Days have become an extraordinary platform of communication, discussion and collaboration between the regions and the protagonists of regional and cohesion policy in Europe”. He then added: “We need to pass to the realization of the objectives in regions that are not only more competitive but that also show more solidarity with each other”. European Commissioner of Regional Policies DANUTA HÜBNER , commenting on the 2007 Open Days, drew particular attention to the co-presence “of a single team of European experts to discuss questions linked to local development, so that new ideas may emerge and we may see more clearly how best to realise EU policy in the field of cohesion”, whose “basic objective consists in raising living standards in all the regions and cities of the Union”. “INVESTORS’ CAFÉ”. The participants included numerous local administrators, interested in the programmes and funds for development allocated by the EU, and also politicians at the national level and various guests, such as Philippe Maystadt, President of the European Investment Bank, and Raphael Alomar, Governor of the Development Bank of the Council of Europe. In the closing session on Thursday 11 October there was a round table on the future of regional policy in the context of globalization, with a report by Michael Spence, Nobel Prizewinner for Economics in 2001. This year’s event also focused on the international dimension of regional policy, with the participation of ministers and territorial representatives of China, Russia and Brazil. A specific venue, the “Investors’ Café”, was created to promote the meeting between territorial authorities, public investors and businesses and to tackle some key problems suggested by the promoters of the Open Days: transport, energy, environment, health, research, financial engineering and innovation.THE EU IS BANKING ON THE TERRITORIES. Coinciding with the Open Days, the new Eurostat Regional Yearbook 2007 was presented. It includes data and surveys involving 268 regional areas in 27 member states plus Norway, Switzerland, Iceland and Liechtenstein. The yearbook also includes analyses, tables and observations on twelve main themes, on which a comparison between the various areas and sub-areas of the European Union was conducted: population, regional gross domestic product, family income, the labour market and productivity, innovation and research, transport and education. In presenting the Yearbook, the director of Eurostat, HERVÉ CARRÉ , explained: “2007 represents a very important year for the regions, and for the start of the EU’s new cohesion policy”. It will permit, between now and 2013, “to invest an unprecedented sum, equivalent in 347 million euros, in regional development”; the investment is subdivided into 450 national, territorial and trans-national programmes. “These statistics – Carré continued – will form part of the criteria used to evaluate the progress of regional development”.PRAGUE, DUBLIN AND RÉUNION… Browsing through the Regional Yearbook we can discover, for example, that the region of Prague (Czech Republic) claims the highest European percentage of students as a ratio to the youth population as a whole, followed by Vienna (Austria) and Brussels (Belgium). The highest rate of women’s employment, on the other hand, is registered in seven regions in England, four in Sweden and two in Finland; at the bottom end of the scale are four regions in Southern Italy and the French island of Réunion. As for public perception of urban spaces, the citizens of Prague are those who most declare themselves convinced “it’s easy to find good accommodation at a reasonable price” in their city (index 75), followed by those of Copenhagen (Denmark, index 74) and Dublin (Ireland, 70). At the bottom of this classification are Naples and Palermo (Italy) and Frankfurt an der Oder (Germany), with an index of only 3. The Yearbook can be consulted on the website of Eurostat: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat.