Mr. President of the European Commission 200, rue de la Loi B – 1049 BRUXELLES

Rennes, 8 October 2003

Dear President Prodi,

It is with great satisfaction that we welcomed the initial details concerning the outcome of the meeting of the College of Commissioners held on 1 October last regarding the Union’s financial prospects after 2006 and the first outlines of the future of regional policy and the main sectoral policies. We feel that these initial guidelines meet the common objective of a return to sustainable growth in Europe in accordance with the guidelines of the Lisbon strategy, particularly by involving the regional authorities alongside the action led by the States.

We should therefore like to express a number of requests that we hope may be taken into account when preparing the Commission’s final proposal:

1°) First of all, we are convinced of the need to manage regional participation in European growth through a single budgetary treatment, whatever the amount of Community funding involved and regardless of the future status of the regions (Objective 1 or 2). Future regional policy should produce a widespread leverage effect throughout the EU, enabling a sustainable tripartite partnership to be initiated between EU, national and regional levels. We believe that such a guideline is also in line with the work you have successfully undertaken on EU governance and the prospect of an ongoing and systematic dialogue with regional and local authorities with regard to policy-making.

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2°) Secondly, we wish to confirm our attachment to a minimum budgetary objective in order to implement this policy. Although the budgetary framework for the future Objective 1 now appears to be quite clear, it should be remembered that the future Objective 2 is set to concern an eligible European population far greater than is the case for the current period (on account of the fact that many regions within EU15 will no longer be eligible under Objective 1 and that infra-regional zoning is to be abolished). An ambitious policy for regional competitiveness and employment can only be credible if it earmarks at least a 0.45% share of EU GDP, in compliance with the commitments made in Berlin in 1999. Furthermore, a line of reasoning based solely on a comparison of budget envelopes between two programming periods would fail to take account of inflation on the one hand and prospects for the enlargement of EU25 after 2006 on the other.

3°) Finally, we should like to recall that our regions are firmly attached to the concept of territorial cohesion, and hope that the Intergovernmental Conference will retain the proposals put forward by the Convention in the future Treaty. In this respect, we will be paying close attention to the Commission’s proposals in this area in terms of future regional policy, particularly with regard to territories suffering from permanent handicaps.

We should like to congratulate you on these initial guidelines and take this opportunity to reiterate the importance we attach to a sincere and constructive dialogue with the Commission.

Yours sincerely,

Claudio Martini President of the CPMR

Cc: Commissaires , , Anna Dimantopoulou, , Margot Wallström, , Antonio Vitorino, Mario Monti, Franz Fischler, Frits Bolkestein, Philippe Busquin, Pedro Solbes, Poul Nielson, Günter Verheugen, Chris Patten, Pascal Lamy, David Byrne, , Viviane Reding.