Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-02-21-Speech-4-009"
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"Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to start by thanking all the shadow rapporteurs for the good and constructive cooperation. Equally, I would like to thank the committee and group staff and Members' assistants. The stronger the community, the better the product!
I greatly welcome the fact that we are discussing the report by Mr Guellec and my own report jointly today. When it comes to the aim of achieving genuinely sustainable development in Europe, these two reports form a complementary whole. Cohesion policy is the hardware, as it were, with the Leipzig Charter and the Territorial Agenda being the software. These instruments can only work in tandem. The EU is equipped with the legal and financial competences through its cohesion policy. We do not have any real responsibility for regional development, urban and spatial planning. That is why a coherent policy – at local and regional level, the level of the national ministers and the EU level – is the prerequisite for sustainable European cities and regions. This is the only way to generate European value-added. The cities are the focus of opportunities and problems. They impact on rural regions and the immediate periphery. That is why we are relying on balanced development of the territory as a whole, on solutions which proceed from a holistic perspective and which at the same time are adapted to the specific situation. There can be no single solution, but there can be common principles such as the integrated approach, the partnership principle, horizontal and vertical, between the cities and the periphery, but also with the various actors who are directly concerned.
We have achieved a great deal of progress at European level. Besides the Leipzig Charter and the Territorial Agenda, the First Action Programme under the Portuguese Presidency, territorial cohesion was included as a Community objective in the Reform Treaty. This strengthens Parliament's weight through shared competence and the codecision procedure. With today's debate, we wanted to deliver a statement from Parliament in advance of the Council's Spring Summit so that territorial and urban issues can be included as clear components in the Lisbon and Göteborg strategies.
It was also the joint wish of the Informal Council of Ministers in Leipzig that the Slovenian Presidency should put the Territorial Agenda on the agenda for this year's Spring Summit in order to achieve greater political recognition of the territorial framework for the development of regions and cities and new forms of participation in the EU's political decisions. This was clearly reiterated at the meeting in the Azores in November. So far, I have no real information available about progress here.
I would therefore have greatly welcomed the presence of a Council representative here today, so that we could have obtained this information about the status of the preparations. Regrettably, I have heard that there is apparently no consensus in the Council to comply with the Ministers' request. I would have liked to hear from the Council whether, and in which form, the Territorial Agenda is to be discussed at the Spring Summit. I would also be interested to hear whether it is true that in the current draft of the Council's Conclusions, no mention is made of territorial issues and nor are relevant amendments envisaged in the Treaty of Lisbon. However, that is the only way to turn our many fine words into real action."@en1
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