EUKN - European Urban Knowledge Network - CoR and the College of Europe join forces to debate multilevel governance

CoR and the College of Europe join forces to debate multilevel governance

Introduction

On 22 September 2009, the Committee of the Regions (CoR) and the College of Europe will organise a conference on Multilevel Governance in Europe. The one-day conference will bring together CoR members and other political and institutional representatives with experts, academics and students, and is an opportunity to present to a wider public the White Paper on Multilevel Governance adopted by the CoR in June 2009, as well as to discuss its main political recommendations. It also strengthens the partnership between the CoR and one of the most prestigious academic institutions in the field of EU studies - the College of Europe in Bruges.

Description

The opening session of the conference, chaired by CoR president Luc Van den Brande, will take the form of a political discussion on the issue of multilevel governance, including contributions from the Swedish EU Presidency, the European Commission, the European Parliament and the Group of Wise Men considering the future of Europe. This will be followed by a roundtable on the political direction that Europe should take at the start of a new mandate for both the European Parliament and European Commission. The event will close with a thematic workshop on the challenges of multilevel governance in the EU, chaired and moderated by representatives of the CoR and the College of Europe.

The event complements the general consultation on the White Paper which was launched in June. The consultation will allow local and regional authorities, associations and other stakeholders to share their views on the issue of multilevel governance within the EU. Comments and recommendations can be submitted via governance@cor.europa.eu until 30 November 2009.

EU involvement

The White Paper on Multilevel Governance was published in June 2009 by the Committee of the Regions. In the White Paper the Committee of the Regions:

considers multilevel governance to mean coordinated action by the European Union, the Member States and local and regional authorities, based on partnership and aimed at drawing up and implementing EU policies;
recommends that each major Community strategic reform should be accompanied by a regional action plan agreed between the European Commission and the Committee of the Regions, setting out the political mechanisms to facilitate the ownership, implementation and evaluation of the policies adopted, and including a decentralised communication plan;
recommends reinforcing the partnership practice, both vertically between “local and regional authorities – national government and European Union” and horizontally between “local and regional authorities – civil society”, particularly in the context of social dialogue;
invites the Commission and the Member States to reform the open method of coordination to make it more inclusive, by developing participatory governance indicators and territorial indicators, in conjunction with regional and local authorities;
recommends that the territorial impact analysis should become standard practice through the involvement, upstream of the policy decision, of the various actors concerned in order to understand the economic, social and environmental repercussions on the regions of Community legislative and non-legislative proposals;
undertakes to submit proposals to support the use of experimentation at local and regional level in certain areas of intervention of the European Union, such as the strategy for growth and jobs, the social agenda, integration policy, innovation policy, cohesion policy, sustainable development and civil defence;
recommends establishing European territorial pacts capable of bringing toge ther, on a voluntary basis, the different competent tiers of government in order to adapt the implementation of the major political priorities and objectives of the European Union on a partnership basis with the local and regional authorities and invites local and regional authorities interested in committing to such a process to indicate their interest as part of the onsultation on the implementation of the White Paper.

Contact info

Committee of the Regions
Rue Belliard 101
1040 Brussels
Belgium
governance@cor.europa.eu
Isabelle Dirkx

Publication date

18/08/2009

Article info
Organisation: Committee of the Regions

Links

Visit the website of the Committee of the Regions Visit the website of the College of Europe

Download the CoR White Paper on Multilevel Governance (PDF, Eng, 174 kB)

Document type

policy

Themes

Urban Policy

Keywords