KOHÉZIÓS, REGIONÁLIS ÉS VÁROSPOLITIKA - Related Opinions

The EESC appreciates the strong political backing behind the EUSAIR and believes that this is crucial to sustaining effective integration between the Europe 2020 Strategy, European enlargement policy and the regional development strategies.

The EESC maintains that during the different stages of the EUSAIR's implementation, public and private economic stakeholders, the social partners and the various components of organised civil society ought to be ensured adequate guidance through ad hoc training programmes and organisational and technical support.

Moreover,  ad hoc indicators should be identified to enable the monitoring, implementation and evaluation of the EUSAIR's programmes and measures.

The EESC believes that the Mediterranean Region needs a Macro-Regional Strategy (EU MMRS) to help the regions face challenges that cannot be satisfactorily resolved by single regions or countries through the usual means. Such a strategy would help the regions concerned to address the causes of uncertainty that dominate the Mediterranean region by increasing the value-added of the positive achievements of the initiatives already launched and the Europe 2020 goals. The success of the MMRS will also have a positive effect on the EU as a whole.