On 21 April, Mr Claude Trémouille, vice-president of the French region of Limousin joined us in the New Europe Studios for an interview. For years he led work on agriculture and rurality in AER. He kindly agreed to share his views on the future of regionalism as well as his memories of working with AER in the framework of our 30th Anniversary.

Mr Trémouille spoke about the ability of AER “with concrete actions […] to demonstrate that Europe is a partner, that we cannot do without Europe today”. He sees the integration of the regions from outside of the EU in AER as a symbol of openness and in order to achieve this integration AER “does exchanges with people, and with nations who can, within AER, bring about an exchange by working together”.

He believes that in the face of the rise of populist parties working alone does not make sense, that is why AER has a strong mission, he says “we can oppose National Front and extremist parties on words, but this is not enough, people want actions, and I believe that AER has this mission to say – Look, we are working concretely on the ground and exchanging good practices, I am talking about Ruract…”. In fact, it was the region of Limousin that first started this program.

Mr Trémouille remains positive about the future of regions and AER has an opportunity to show it.