Diplomats from the 27 EU countries are meeting tomorrow in Berlin, in order to make some progress in the talks on the European Constitution. This meeting follows last Saturday’s ‘Sintra summit’.

The negotiations on the European Constitutional Treaty will now enter a new phase, in view of the June European Council. The Assembly of European Regions (AER), the political organisation of more than 250 regions Europe-wide, has got two messages for the European political leaders and diplomats:

• we ask the EU political leaders to involve regional representatives in the talks on the future Constitutional Treaty. The EU is also a ‘Europe of the regions’. It is in the regions that the majority of directives and regulations are implemented. Regions know best what Europe really means. Past experience shows that when the regions have not been involved in the European political process, failure has been the outcome: the ‘Lisbon Agenda’ is a clear example of that.

• if a new Intergovernmental Conference is opened next autumn, the EU members should find an agreement only on a minimum number of necessary amendments to the Constitutional Treaty. On top of that, those provisions which reinforce subsidiarity and the involvement of the regions in the EU policies should not be touched.

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