News
Mediterranean Programme - [09/22/2008]
Ambition and realism in the area of decentralisation in the Mediterranean
On 15 September, Barcelona Provincial Council, the CIDOB Foundation and the European Institute of the Mediterranean (IEMed) organised a meeting between experts and representatives of different Catalan institutions to discuss the best strategies to promote decentralisation processes in the Mediterranean. Speaking at the meeting, the Director of the CIDOB Foundation, Josep Ribera, reminded the participants that Spain will be taking over the EU presidency in 2010, and that this meant that it is particularly propitious time to draw up joint strategies to influence the European and the Euro-Mediterranean agenda.
Decentralisation processes are of key importance in order to both promote democracy on a local level and to encourage development processes; this point was made by Agustí Fernández de Losada, Director General for Institutional Relations at Barcelona Provincial Council. Meanwhile, Senén Florensa, the Director of IEMed, declared that it was a particularly complex issue that would require effort from everybody.
The meeting was attended by representatives of different town and city councils, the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Department for the European Union of the Generalitat, the Office for the Promotion of Peace and Human Rights, Ciudades y Gobiernos Locales Unidos (United Local Governments and Cities, or CGLU) and the Barcelona Metropolitan Area. The session commenced with a presentation of the report drafted by Barcelona Provincial Council on the current state of the decentralisation processes in the Mediterranean basin, and which highlights some of the structural deficiencies in areas such as administrative powers and funding capacities. The presentation was followed by a debate that dealt with a number of topics, including the problem of the absence of interlocutors, the tendencies towards decentralisation or recentralisation, the advantages and disadvantages of separating local and regional dimensions and the problem represented by the fact that many of these reflections are made in the north, and have the south as their subject.
It was highlighted during the debate that there are steps that can be taken in the period leading up to Spain's presidency in 2010, but that ambition should be combined with realism, so that plans do not end up frustrated. To this end, it was stressed that there is a need to use the experience and the networks of all the actors present at the meeting and to improve coordination between them and the coherence of their actions. Nonetheless, the point was also made that a strategy of this nature should transcend the objective of 2010, given that the framework of the EU and Euro-Mediterranean relations is not the only channel through which progress can be made in this field.