7 April 2022 – At the meeting of the Commission for Territorial Cohesion Policy and EU Budget (COTER) of the European Committee of the Regions, Nikola Dobroslavić, President of the Adriatic Ionian Euroregion and Prefect of Dubrovnik-Neretva County, was appointed as rapporteur for the opinion “Towards a macro-regional strategy in the Mediterranean“.
In the coming months, Dobroslavić will draft the new opinion which will endorse the possibility to establish a new macro-regional strategy for the Mediterranean basin.
The adoption of this opinion is expected at the plenary session of the Committee of the Regions which is scheduled in October 2022.
President Dobroslavić commented: The consequences of the current war in Ukraine, the pandemics and the climate change in the Mediterranean basin call for an urgent and coordinated response of the local and regional authorities. A macro-regional strategy is needed to enable Mediterranean countries and regions to work together more effectively in response to common challenges, especially those related to climate change. The strategy should enable the local and regional level to better coordinate themselves and to identify key priorities at territorial level in the whole Mediterranean area.
In its work programme, the COTER Commission decided to continue in advocating and strengthening the existing macro-regional strategies, as well as to support the creation of new one, allowing the Mediterranean area with concrete action plans and projects based on common challenges and needs.
A European Union (EU) macro-regional strategy, is a policy framework which allows countries located in the same macroregion to jointly tackle and find solutions to problems or to better use the potential they have in common. EU macro-regional strategies are initiated and requested by EU Member States concerned (and in some cases non-EU countries) located in the same geographical area via the European Council. Following the European Council request, the strategies are drafted and adopted by the European Commission.
The possible adopotion of the strategy will be a long and complicate process and the opinion “Towards a macro-regional strategy in the Mediterranean” is a CoR proactive initiative aimed to adopt an official position on this particular issue….it is another step towards to the future EU strategy for the whole Mediterranean.
The Adriatic Ionian Eurororegion, as one of the promoters of the MedCoopAlliance, has always supported all the initiatives aimed to promote an integrated, macro-regional and multi-level vision within the framework of European policies in the Mediterranean.
