Assembly of European Regions

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Monitoring regionalisation has always been one of AER's main missions and objectives. Keeping track of the developments in all European countries, in terms of decentralisation, subsidiarity, regional democracy and key to understanding where European regionalisation comes from, and where we are heading.

The section below brings together articles, interviews, publications from members and experts across Europe to keep track of the State of the Regions in Europe.

An integrated approach to regional development

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Gratian Mihailescu, expert from the AER’s Observatory on Regionalisation, was invited to speak at the Danube Conference about multi-level governance on 16 October 2015.

The roundtable discussion was organized in Cluj Napoca, with the occasion of 100 years celebration of Junior Chamber International. JCI is a is a international NGO of young people between 18 and 40 years old It has members in about 124 countries, and regional or national organizations in many of them and it encourages young people to become responsible citizens and to participate in efforts towards social and economic development, and international co-operation, good-will and understanding.

Gratian Mihailescu participated in a roundtable about Smart Cities and Innovation, together with various stakeholders including the mayor, vice-president of Cluj county, academia from Babes Bolyay University, Business sector and local NGO’s.

Learn more about the AER’s Observatory on Regionalisation and our pool of experts.
You can find and read his presentation here below.

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Catalan pro-independence parties gain majority: what happens next?

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Amadeu Altafaj, Permanent Representative to the European Union for Catalan Government was interviewed on Belgian public radio, RTBF by Bertrand Henne on “Matin Première”.

He insisted on the historically high participation (77%) in these elections which male the event a strong and decisive milestone in Catalunya’s history. The results are somewhat surprising compared to the mere 20% pro-indenpendance that were accounted for a few years ago, but he explains a shift in the mentalities that is due to growing frustration in the Catalan people for the Spanish government’s lack of ability to defend the catalan interests. 2010 was a decisive year in this when the Constitutional Court dismissed the carefully negotiated Statute of Autonomy.

He claims that the next steps will be to call for discussions with the Spanish authorities as well as EU institutions. Although heads of States have not shown support for Catalunya’s independence, he insists that the European Commission is open to the idea as are many national parliaments. He adds that the history of the European construction has shown time and time again that although heads of States tend to prefer the status quo, the EU is capable of evolution and creativity. He adds that the Catalan people are EU citizens by right, in addition to their nationality, making the legal implications more complicated. But the question at hand is, and should remain political not legal.

When asked if there was a risk that other European regions may take Catalunya’s lead he replied that a democratic act is never a threat. All countries and situations are unique but he shared his profound sense of admiration for Belgium’s political maturity and sense of dialogue and compromise which have lead to finding solutions to very sensitive and emotional issues.

Mr Altafaj concluded that the next step was to open discussions and negotiations in Madrid and Brussels.

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The role of European Regions in 2015

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Foreword

Early 2014, as the new programming period is starting, the Assembly of European Regions
(AER) decides to look into the role that regional authorities play in European politics and in
Europe in general. To what extent is the subsidiarity principle implemented in European
countries? Have Regions seen their competences and influence developed in the last years?
How does multilevel governance look like in the various European states? If we consider the
case of EU regional policy, to what extent has the partnership principle been respected for the
setting up and implementation of this key policy for European regions?
These questions have been at the heart of a study run in 2014-2015. More than 40 academic
experts accepted to give their contribution to this work, by delivering detailed reports about the
state of regionalisation and multilevel governance in chosen European countries. As of now (1st
August 2015), the study covers 25 countries, and 9 more reports are under preparation. Each
report is based on a similar structure, thereby allowing a comparative approach among all
studied countries.
The present “digest” entails a summarised version of the available country reports. The
objective is to provide interested readers with a short overview of the main features of
regionalism in various European countries. The complete versions of the country reports are
available on the following page.

(Use Pop Out button to Download/Open)

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France prepares for new regions

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The National Assembly and Senate have adopted the draft bill on the new territorial structure of the country after a first agreement from the Joint Committee on the text on 16 July.  This represents the 3rd part of the territorial reform instigated by President Hollande. 

Decentralisation allows the transfer of administrative competences from the State to local authorities. Today, France is made up of 4 levels of local administration: 101 departments, 36 700 municipalities, 22 regions and 2 600 intermunicipal groups in France. These levels result in a complex organisation with shared competences and financial overlap making it quite difficult to understand for the citizen and hindering the efficiency of the public sector.

The reform seeks to change the face of the French territory for the next decades and aims at reducing public expenditure and to better respond to the needs of the citizens.

Find out more about the new regions in France. (French)

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Study on regionalisation

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As the new programming period has started, the AER is willing to look into the role that regional authorities actually play in European politics and in Europe in general in 2014. The study will focus on several questions, such as: To what extent is the subsidiarity principle implemented in European countries? Have Regions seen their competences and influence developed in the last years? How does multilevel governance look like in the various European states? If we consider the case of EU regional policy, to what extent has the partnership principle been respected for the setting up and implementation of this key policy for European regions? The study will be published in 2015 at the occasion of AER’s 30th Anniversary.

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The role of European regions in 2015

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As the new programming period has started, the AER is willing to look into the role that regional authorities actually play in European politics and in Europe in general in 2014. The study will focus on several questions, such as: To what extent is the subsidiarity principle implemented in European countries? Have Regions seen their competences and influence developed in the last years? How does multilevel governance look like in the various European states? If we consider the case of EU regional policy, to what extent has the partnership principle been respected for the setting up and implementation of this key policy for European regions? The study will be published in 2015 at the occasion of AER’s 30th Anniversary.

Link to the country reports
Link to the full report

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DG Regio efforts to implement cohesion policy in EU Member States

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Gratian Mihailescu graduated in communication and public relations. He specialized in European Affairs, International Relations and Development receiving scholarships from different countries. He was Erasmus student at Eberhard Karl University of Tuebingen and Erasmus Mundus at Trento University, Italy and Corvinus University of Budapest. Between the two masters, he worked and studied in Brussels, doing a postgraduate course in project management and community advisor.
Since 2012, Gratian Mihailescu is back to Romania and is a consultant and columnist, cooperating with various think tanks on public policy issues, or with consulting companies. His main area of focus are EU policies, EU funds, Regional Development, Democracy & Good-Governance, Regionalisation and Subsidiarity principle.
In 2013, he established an NGO, Local Development Institute aiming to support activities and initiatives that contribute to local and regional development in West part of Romania.

In July 2015, Gratian Mihailesch gave an interview about EU funds absorption, about DG Regio efforts to implement cohesion policy in EU Member States, which is interesting for all the people using EU funds, or for the public administration of EU Member States and for AER Members.

Read the full interview

 

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“The future of regionalism is bright”

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“Regions, federated states and autonomous communities are above all mainstays of democracy; they strongly support cultural diversity in Europe and they are major partners in socio-economic development”. This message has been AER’s core vision for the last 30 years. It was the basis for its creation in 1985, was manifested in the AER Declaration on Regionalism adopted in 1996, and has not lost any of its relevance today, in 2015.

At its annual General Assembly in the Swedish region of Västra Götaland in the beginning of June, AER members showed their commitment during the 30th Anniversary celebrations to the importance of regional democracy and good regional governance.This was enforced by the presence of AER’s institutional partners, the Committee of the Regions, and the Chamber of Regions of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe, as well as its partner network CALRE.

Apart from looking back, AER members also acknowledged and discussed continuous challenges such as climate change, debt crisis, youth unemployment and decentralisation. Prof. Fredrik SÖDERBAUM University of Gothenburg offered the following conclusion “[…] regionalism is thriving! The future of regionalism is bright — which is not to deny the many challenges that still exist […] regionalism has become more dynamic and more relevant in spite of the transformation of the nation-state and the many radical changes in the world during recent decades. This means that regions are likely to continue to thrive in the 21st century. However, the future of regionalism is in many ways different from earlier forms of regionalism.”

 

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Polish Local Government Support for Green Energy and Climate Projects

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Adriana Skorupska is an analyst at the Polish Institute of International Affairs in the Eastern and South Eastern Europe Programme.
Her interests include the international cooperation of self-government, cross-border cooperation and the decentralization reforms in the Eastern Partnership Countries, especially in Georgia and Ukraine.

She published an article in the Bulletin of the Polish Institution of International Affairs in June 2015 on “Polish Local Government Support for Green Energy and Climate Projects”

Read the full article
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“What future for the regions” by Fredrik Söderbaum

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What future for the regions?

Fredrik Söderbaum

Professor of Peace and Development Research, School of Global Studies,
University of Gothenburg
E-mail: [email protected]

Thanks to the organizers for inviting me to this exciting event. It is a great privilege to be invited to speak about on my favourite topic.

One general conclusion that can be drawn from this event, and from regional processes around the world more generally, is that regionalism is thriving! The future of regionalism is bright — which is not to deny the many challenges that still exist.

It needs to be acknowledged that, in many ways, regionalism has become more dynamic and more relevant in spite of the transformation of the nation-state and the many radical changes in the world during recent decades.

This means that regions are likely to continue to thrive in the 21st century. However, the future of regionalism is in many ways different from earlier forms of regionalism.

When reflecting on the future of regionalism, one core question is to understand why some regions thrive while others are less successful, or even failures?

One of the most influential scholars in the field of regionalism, Professor Michael Keating, points out that ‘new regionalism is modernising and forward-looking, in contrast to an older provincialism, which represented resistance to change and defence of tradition’.

This means, among other things, that while old regionalist strategies often centred around industrial location and growth poles within a particular nation-state, today it has become clear that there is not one best mode of production and economic regionalism. Capitalism is socially embedded and takes different forms in different regions.

Regional specialists have written extensively about the new approaches to regionalism and regional development. The problem is that it has proved remarkably difficult to pin down the nature of the qualities that make for a successful and competitive region. It has proved even more difficult to show how successful regions can be reproduced elsewhere.

This is because ‘new regionalism’ is characterized by complexity and diversity. There are thus many varities of regions and economics, politics and culture may be combined in different ways. Complexity and variation rule out easy solutions and definitions.

A general feature of successful regionalism seems to be that regions are able to adjust and adapt to new circumstances and conditions. It is also evident that compared to previous forms of regionalism, which primarily centred around the relationship between the subnational region and the central government, new forms of regionalism often extend beyond the boundaries of the nation-state. The future of regionalism will deepen this trend.

About one decade ago, a scholar from Gothenburg, called Jörgen Gren, wrote an interesting book entitled The Perfect Region. The conclusion was that ‘the perfect region’ managed to adapt to the transformed political and economic landscape in Europe and successfully exploit the relationship with national government but also with the EU. The less successful region were less responsive and adaptive to the nation- state and to the EU.

This perspective of the Perfect Region is, it seems, compatible with the Declaration on Regionalism in Europe adopted by the Assembly of European Regions. A key passage of this declaration states that:

“The regionalist movement in Europe adheres to the belief that the powers vested in the regions complement the power vested in the nation-states as well as the supranational powers vested in the European Union.”

This statement in the Declaration is, of course, familiar to most of you, perhaps even somewhat elementary. Yet, it has far-reaching implications.

I will make two general reflections around this point, the first focuses on the relationship between regions and the nation-state, while the second deals with the international and transnational links of the regions.

Regarding the link between regions and states, the regions should not try to imitate or replicate the nation-state or attempt to become a new type of region-state, which competes with the nation-state. Even if there, of course, may be conflicts and competition between regions and nation-states, both need each other, and both will prosper if they recognize that they fulfil different and complementary roles within a larger system of multi-level governance — centred around regional, national and supranational governance.

In the academic world, this type of thinking has given rise to a very influential theory, labelled “multilevel governance”. The main point of multilevel governance, which is basically outlined in the Lisbon Treaty, is that authority is dispersed at various levels, and governance at one level cannot function in isolation from another.

It is often neglected that this way of thinking is not necessarily compatible with the well- known principle of subsidiarity. Although there are many interpretations of subsidiarity, one problem with subsidiarity is that it tends to favour one particular level of governance, usually the lowest level of governance, instead of the interaction of governance on multiple levels.

The increasing relevance of multilevel governance is related to the unbundling of the centralised nation-state. The unbundling results in that a multitude of private and public actors both below and above the level of the nation-state are able to cooperate within a multi-layered and multilevel governance system. This opens up for a much more dynamic and complex type of interaction both inside the nation-state and on the international scene.

The point is that multilevel governance is more relevant and efficient than subsidiarity/decentralisation in providing solutions to the challenges that regions, states and societies are currently facing, such as climate change, economic development, employment and migration.

Regarding the transational dimension, the Assembly of European Regions is of course a reflection of that international and cross-border contacts have become deeply institutionalised within European regions. Yet, the intensification of globalization implies that the world outside Europe has become closer and more important. This has many implications.

One thing is clear, something has happened to international diplomacy and to international governance.

In the past, the centralised nation-state was controlling outside international relations and international diplomatic contacts. To some extent, the nation-states are still in control. However, there is a quickly growing tendency that regions and large cities

develop their international contacts and engage in what is referred to as paradiplomacy — the foreign policy of subnational governments.

Such paradiplomacy is by no means restricted to Europe — there is a global pattern of paradiplomatic activities. We thus need to think beyond Europe, and add another, global, level or layer to the multilevel governance perspective.

As an example: One of my former PhD students left the University and after some years advanced to become the Head of the São Paulo State Government’s Office of Foreign Affairs. São Paulo State has quickly emerged as one of the most prominent subnational players on the global scene. And my former PhD student often emphasize that São Paulo State could be ranked as the 19th world’s largest economy. This statement was intended to reveal that regions and metropolitan regions have emerged as new players on the global scene, but also to draw attention to that the sharp distinctions between states and regions have become blurred in the emerging world of globalised diplomacy.

Such paradiplomacy is a recent and still rather embryonic phenomenon. Even if it is tightly linked to efforts to strengthen economic competitiveness and innovation, it still means that international relations is not simply confined to nation-states. In fact, paradiplomacy is even written into the constitution of several federal states.

My time is up and my final word is simply to conclude by stating that the role of regions and cities on the global scene is likely to continue to expand in the future. It is an exciting change, even if it is too early to say how comprehensive and deep such paradiplomacy and global contacts will become in the future. Needless to say, not all regions will benefit or have an interest in engaging on the global scene.

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Decentralisation policies: Reshuffling the scene

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Our expert from the Academic Council of the Assembly of European Regions, Pekka Kettunen, spoke about the decentralisation conference that took place in Croatia.

There was an international conference on Decentralization policies: Reshuffling the scene, 7-10 May 2015, in Dubrovnik, Croatia. The conference was organized by the Institute for Public Administration, Croatia, in collaboration and with the support from Research Committee 5 Comparative Studies on Local Government and Politics (IPSA), Research Committee 32 Public Policy & Administration (IPSA), the Croatian Political Science Association, the Faculty of Law, Study Centre for Public Administration and Public Finance, the Faculty of Political Science University of Zagreb.

In the beautiful city of Dubrovnik, tens of papers by both PhD-students and senior scholars were presented and discussed during the four-day conference. The discussions proved that regional development, and more generally the sub-national development, varies a great deal in the various parts of Europe, some countries being EU-members and others perhaps in the process of negotiating to have a closer relationship with the EU. It also was clear that in some cases regional institutions are seen more as from the representation viewpoint, i.e. how to ascertain a fair representation of the sub-regional interests, while in other cases regional institutions are seen from an instrumental perspective asking the best ways to deal with, say, coordination, service provision and networking in the European arena. Of course the two perspectives are connected. It was also noted that sub-national politico-administrative architecture is usually historically rooted and hence lessons to learn have to be taken with caution.

Pekka Kettunen, Dr. Abo Akademi University, Finland

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Regions are leaders of change and innovation

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Nicolas Bouzou is a French economist born in 1976. He founded Asterès, a consultancy firm, in 2006. He is Director of Studies in the MBA Law & Management program at the University of Paris II Assas.

In April 2015, Nicolas Bouzou gave an interview to the AER, in which he analyzes the leading position of the regions, and their key role as actors of change and innovation.

Read the full interview (only available in french)

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The role of local government in national foreign policy in Poland

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Adriana Skorupska is an analyst at the Polish Institute of International Affairs in the Eastern and South Eastern Europe Programme.
Her interests include the international cooperation of self-government, cross-border cooperation and the decentralization reforms in the Eastern Partnership Countries, especially in Georgia and Ukraine.

She published an article on “the role of local government in national foreign policy in Poland” in April 2015.

Read the full article

 

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“30 Years, 30 Stories” with Claude Tremouille

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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.

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