News

Regionalisation crucial for democratic opening and sustainable growth, says Committee of Regions President in Morocco

18-06-2012

 

A delegation of the Committee of the Regions (CoR) this week attended high level meetings in Rabat with Moroccan ministries and with the bureau of the Euro-Mediterranean Regional and Local Assembly (ARLEM). The discussions focused on ways to support the democratic decentralisation of powers in the Arab Spring area and how to strengthen the regional dimension of the EuroMed partnership.
 
Meetings addressed issues ranging from the rules related to the election of regions’ presidents and assemblies to defining regional competences in different policy areas, and from the vital questions related to regions’ own resources, fiscal reform and equalisation, to the relations between the public and private sectors and the promotion of new investments. The challenges and options of the ongoing regionalisation process were also among the hottest issues in the meetings between Bresso and top level representatives of Moroccan national and regional government.
 
“Morocco is facing the crucial challenge of regionalisation, of giving a new and significant role to local and regional authorities," said Bresso. It is therefore, “important for us to be here now, to provide to our Moroccan friends the full support and cooperation of the Committee of the Regions and of the Mediterranean Assembly of Local and Regional Authorities”. According to Bresso, “the efforts put in place in the Arab Spring area to decentralise the institutional assets shows that there is no democracy without the factual involvement of local communities in the shaping and implementation of policies and rules.” 

“Regionalisation in Morocco is today a huge construction site", said the Moroccan Interior Minister, M. Mohand Laenser, "An independent ad hoc commission has delivered relevant results which must be put now into practice and translated into legislation, with a strong involvement of local and regional authorities.” In this perspective Laenser said, “The experience shared within the European Union's (EU) Committee of the Regions and the partnership opportunities promoted by the ARLEM can give a strong contribution to make the process successful.”
 
The CoR President also held a series of bilateral meetings with relevant players in the regionalisation process including Youssef Amrani, Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister in charge of EU relations and former Secretary General of the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM), as well as with the Secretary General of the Minister for Urban Policies, Essaid Znibe.
 
During a lively debate on regionalisation, the Head of the EU Delegation in Morocco, Eneko Landaburu, underlined the fact that the EU has recently reaffirmed its full support for the wave of democratisation of the Arab Spring and last year revised its neighbourhood policy to better answer the specific needs of this phase. “We are working effectively with the Moroccan government in several fields," said Landaburu, "but we have to do more and we need to work more and more directly with the regional authorities in order to better address local needs and to meet the citizens’ expectations of a more direct democracy.” (EU Neighbourhood Info)
 
Read more
 
Press release
 
ARLEM – webpage
 
Committee of the Regions website
 
EU Delegation – Morocco
 
European Neighbourhoud Info Centre webpage – Civil society and local authorities
 

 


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