Power struggle looming as regions demand more rights

Date: 10/10/02

By Dana Spinant

REGIONS and local authorities have stepped up their fight for a share of power in Europe as they seek to take advantage of the major reshuffling of the EU system envisaged by the Convention.

Representatives of regions, who had hoped the Convention would increase their role in Europe, fear they will be excluded from the present negotiations over power sharing. They believe the debate may focus too much on member states and the EU layer, instead of on the regional level, closer to the citizen.

Strong regions with law-making powers, like the German Länder, and associations of less mighty regions are pressing for their concerns to be higher up the Convention's agenda; however, their priorities are different and so is the influence they can exert.

While the powerful and rich Länder seek no less than being treated like states, associations representing local and regional authorities want, more modestly, to be consulted at different stages of decision-making.

They are targeting recognition of their role in the constitutional treaty.

The Spanish autonomous communities have an ambiguous position: not as powerful as the Länder, but more ambitious that the French regions, they have a difficult relationship with the central government in Madrid.

Recent proposals by a Convention working group aimed at introducing a mechanism to ensure the EU legislates only when member states cannot do so successfully have been attacked for not giving adequate powers to regions. Under the plans, presented last week by Spanish MEP Iñigo Méndez de Vigo, chairman of the subsidiarity working group, the regions would have only an indirect means of challenging Brussels via the Committee of the Regions. The body, gathering representatives of regional and local authorities in Brussels, would take legal action against the Commission for not respecting the principle of subsidiarity at the European Court of Justice.

The Länder, which have fought for the right to appeal directly to the Court of Justice, see this proposal as a setback.

However, Méndez de Vigo explains that giving the regions a direct right to appeal to the Court against the Commission would alter the relationship between states and regions, as the latter would have rights similar to those of national parliaments.

Members of the Convention believe this would be a dangerous innovation, as it would risk upsetting the organisation of member states and their relationship with their own regions.

The working group proposes that the Commission consult regional and local authorities before tabling legislation that might affect them directly or indirectly.

However, the German Länder insist they should have the right to send a warning to the Commission for non-compliance with the subsidiarity principle.

Such a right would be granted only to national parliaments under the current plans.

Jos Chabert, a Belgian member of the Committee of the Regions, believes the demand is legitimate: 'You should accept the general principle that regional parliaments can replace national parliaments when the legislative proposal [put forward by the Commission] concerns areas on which regions with legislative powers are [exclusively] competent.'

However, associations of local and regional authorities are keen to dissociate themselves from the ambitious claims of the Länder.

'We do not require being treated like member states, but the region has its place in Europe. We want a formal recognition, in the Treaty, of our role, in order to be able to claim the right to be consulted by Brussels,' said Sandra Mezzadri, director of institutional affairs at the Conference of Peripheral Maritime Regions, grouping 146 regions from 25 states.

Regions and local authorities have stepped up their fight for a share of power in Europe as they seek to take advantage of the major reshuffling of the EU system envisaged by the European Convention.

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