EUROPEAN COMMISSION
WORKSHOP
ON THE “MECHANISMS FOR THE IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS”
Athens, Greece - 6 DECEMBER 2001 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001
PROGRAMME
- Greeting by Mr. Christos Pachtas, Deputy Minister of National Economy. - Presentation of the objectives and working methods of the workshop – R. Shotton, Lea Verstraete, European Commission. - Presentation of the planned mechanisms for implementing regional and local development actions for the 2000 -2006 CSF – CSF Managing Authority. - The Contrats de Plan État-Region in France: an experience of negotiations between levels of governance. Michel Lacave, Professor at the University of Montpellier I, Expert. - The regional and local development implementation framework in Greece – Giorgios Michaelidis, Professor at the University of Thessaly, Expert, BCS - Thessaloniki.
SESSION I: “Local Employment Initiatives”
Chairperson: Evi Christofilopoulou, General Secretary, Ministry of Labour.
- Best practice in employment initiatives in the region of Bidasoa – Ms. Maribel Lorenzo Borahona, Expert, Bidasoa Activa, Head of the Finance, Design and Innovation Department. - Best practice in employment initiatives in the Municipality of Turku, Finland – Ms. Teija Raninen, Communications Consultant, Municipality of Turku. - Presentation of the experience and implementation mechanisms of local employment initiatives in Magnesia Prefecture – P. Skotiniotis, Prefect of Magnesia. - Discussion SESSION 2: “Innovation and the Information Society in the Regions”
Chairperson: G. Papakonstantinou, Special Secretary, Ministry of National Economy
- Presentation of experience/best practice in the joint action between Finland and Sweden in the RIS Northern EU project – Mr. Jukka Teras, Expert, Oulu Technopolis, Finland.
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- Innovation in the region of central Macedonia, experiences and prospects – Professor Iakovos Vassalos, Head of the Thessaloniki Technology Park. - The information society in the region of Crete: experiences and prospects – Mr. Stelios Orphanoudakis, Professor at the University of Crete, Head of the IT Institute at the Foundation for Technology and Research. - Discussion
SESSION 3: “Integrated Actions for the Development of Urban and Mountainous Regions”
Chairperson: Mr. D. Psaltopoulos, Professor of Agricultural Development at the University of Patras.
- Presentation of experience/best practice from the mountainous areas of the Piemonte region in Italy – Ms. Elena di Bella, Expert, Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, Torino, Italy. - Presentation of experience/best practice for urban development action in England – Mr. Peter Ramsden, Expert, New Economics Foundation, London, UK. - Presentation of the experience of the Egnatia Foundation in Epirus – Ms. Anna Asimakopoulou, Director of the Egnatia Foundation, Ioannina. - Presentation of the experience of a Greek city in urban development – Ms. Alexandra Lazari, Development Company of the Municipality of Patras. - Discussion
CONCLUSIONS OF THE WORKSHOP
Chairperson: Ms. Georgia Zembiliadou, Head of the Managing Authority, ROP for Western Macedonia.
- Presentation of the basic points and conclusions of the day’s presentations – Mr. Alasdair Reid, Expert, ADE S.A., Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium. - Discussion - Final conclusions by a representative of the CSF Managing Authority. - Final conclusions by a representative of the European Commission.
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THURSDAY, 6 DECEMBER 2001
Mr.G.KOLYVAS: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. You have been invited for two days by the European Structural Funds and we would like to ask you to contribute to the success of this two-day workshop. This is St. Nicolas day and I would like to wish many happy returns to those of you named Nikos or Niki. We have not made you come here in order to spend your day celebrating your name day in the Caravel, but there was no other date on which we could schedule it. The Vice Minister of National Economy, Mr. Pachtas was to be here this morning, but he had other engagements and he couldn’t be present. Therefore the Secretary General, Mr. Kostas Theos, is replacing him today and I would like to ask him for his initial address to our meeting.
Mr.Κ.THEOS: Ladies and gentlemen, dear friends, the Vice Minister of National Economy Mr. Pachtas asked me to present a welcome address for this workshop organised by the European Commission. He had previous engagements in northern Greece and he couldn’t be present here today. He apologizes and he asked me to convey to you his wishes for every success during this workshop. He will be closely following the conclusions of this workshop. So, ladies and gentlemen I will only say a few words on the general framework of today’s event. First of all, I would like to thank the European Commission for the initiative and mainly Mr. Shotton and Mrs. Verstraete, for the initiative of organising this conference. I would like to thank them particularly for the content of this workshop, because the content of the workshop reflects the needs within the framework of the Operational Programmes of the third CSF.
It is true that during the last months we have made a lot of effort in order to promote the new generation of the third CSF Operational Programmes. We have given a lot of time to adapting to new procedures and new regulations and we often did not give enough time to the substance of the programmes themselves. Therefore it is a very interesting experience today because we have the opportunity to look at our programmes once again, forgetting all about the regulations and complex procedures of the third CSF. The themes, that is, implementation mechanisms for local and regional
4 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 development projects and actions, local employment initiatives and innovations, information society and the regions, as well as integrated actions, are all interlinked because these are all actions concerning the civil society and its needs.
I will mention the general framework guiding these actions. As you very well know, Greece is going through a period of dynamic growth and will enter the Economic and Monetary Union in January. We have growth rates among the highest in Europe, we have forecasts which are very favourable for the coming years, and the prospect of macroeconomic development. If we add to that the third Community Support Framework, along with the Community initiatives and the Cohesion Fund, all of which make up a development package of EUR 50 billion, and if we add on top of that the momentum supplied by the Olympic Games being organised in Greece, we can imagine a positive, very positive impact on Greece.
What is very interesting is that all these positive elements will also be addressed from the viewpoint of quality during these two days of workshops. These features are features where there are still some shortcomings for our country. We have had a brief democratic life period in Greece, only twenty-five years, that is. Some years ago we didn’t have regions. Some years ago we didn’t have second-tier elected local authorities and a very few years ago all these institutions had only minimal competencies. The central state is trying to decentralise and it is gradually decentralising in the regions and in local authorities. Regional administration therefore is a continuous worksite, I would say, and there are constant works in progress. There has been the unification of municipalities and communes under the institutional framework called the Kapodistrias Law. And I think that the main problem of our country is that we don’t have a tradition of establishing such institutions.
This is why today’s workshop will be of particular interest. In other member states there have been institutions in place for many years, for many decades. In other states there has been a reverse process going on, that is, they started from the basics and they went on and developed some central administration. This has not taken place in Greece and this has often been reflected in local activities. This workshop is also very important in view of the continuation of Cohesion Fund policies after 2006 and in view of the
5 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 discussions in all the European Union institutions on the modern models of governance.
I think that our country has made very important progress in recent years. I don’t mean by that that there is nothing to be done. There is a lot to be done. These are new institutions, which are now acquiring new competencies and are negociating the path towards acknowledgement. All contributing factors, that is both central government and local authorities, must realise that each one of us at our own level must make the state more friendly for the citizen, must bring it closer to the citizen.
The interface between the state and the citizen will always take place at a local level and at a constantly more local level. The municipalities are called upon to become beacons for the mobilisation of local resources, economic or productive resources. Some cases of dysfunction noticed previously at the level of central government are now also noticed at the level of local authorities, the regional first or second-level local authorities. In last year’s report by the Ombudsman I think that we all noticed some comments on that. Our regional structure, that is, regional, prefectural, departmental authorities and local authorities, are the levels of this infrastructure which need to be developed and today’s workshop will help us realize how these local institutions, those institutions that are close to subsidiarity, will help us improve our position within the future of the European Union.
Information, integrated actions and local initiatives are of crucial importance because they will all give the new features that this model needs for the third CSF, because it is this new model that we have adopted for the third CSF. It is also of crucial importance for the adaptation of our country to the new situation for the years after 2006, that is when the situation will be different for all of us. Priorities will be different at the European Union level and we hope that our regions will not be new Objective 1 regions. Some of them, we hope, will be Objective 2 regions, that is we will have achieved convergence to such an extent that we will have avoided Objective 1, which is below 75% of the Community average.
I would like to wish you every success during these two workshops, both today’s workshop and tomorrow’s, and I would like to thank the European Commission once again. Thank you for your initiative; it is very
6 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 important for us. In a meeting a couple of weeks ago we agreed with the European Commission that there will be another meeting in January which will be more targeted on integrated regional development actions for urban and mountain regions. This is a Commission initiative for the month of January to come. Thank you very much.
Mr.R.SHOTTON: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you, Mr. Theos, for your introduction. I would like to welcome you here on behalf of the Commission; both Lea Verstraete and I welcome you. She will say a few words of introduction after me. I would also like to begin this short introduction by thanking too the Greek Authorities for their support in organising this event.
We have today speakers from Greece and speakers from regions elsewhere in the Union. This will be an illustration once again that local and regional initiative is a reality in Greece and an impressive one, as it is elsewhere in the Union. But to see that local initiatives and regional initiatives exist and deserve recognition is not really the focus of this meeting. The focus is not really, as you have understood, on what to do but on how to do it. And so we are looking through the prism of some individual case studies to look more at how they have organised themselves to carry out the actions that they have decided upon. But the first message, nevertheless, that I think all of us should take away, is that there are a lot of regional and local initiatives going on in Greece. It’s perfectly possible within the existing administrative and legal framework in Greece, within the existing organisation of government; we don’t need changes in that framework in order to start regional and local initiatives. We can get on with the job immediately. But we will also see, I think, from examples in Greece and from other countries, that it might be possible to expand our ambition by organising more intelligently the partnership between local and regional people and national administrations so that we can increase the developmental effect of local and regional initiatives. This partnership, of course, can have a number of levels of ambition. It can be quite simply a dialogue and exchange of information, an awareness of what each is doing and a willingness to seek a certain complementarity between local and regional action and national action. There can also be encouragement and support from the national level in quite simple ways, not necessarily financial ways, by recognition of the importance of what is being done at local and regional level. And we will hear an example from another member state of the type of recognition which national government gives to
7 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 local and regional initiative. But it is possible, of course, to imagine going further and to agree jointly a package of actions, some of which are financed locally and regionally, some of which are financed nationally, and which together create a critical mass of financing which can have a much bigger leverage than individual initiatives.
We can go further too, in the sense that beyond talking about individual projects we can talk about strategy between the local and regional levels and the national level and there are examples of that, for example in information society applications where there is a dialogue starting about strategy as well as individual projects. And of course at the top of the tree perhaps, we have a situation that you will hear about in France for example where there is contractual commitment between regional partners and national partners on a multiannual basis to carry out an agreed programme of work, which is, of course, a much more sophisticated approach than is presently the reality in Greece. So there is nothing bad about working back-to-back as it were between the regional level and the national level, each doing their own projects. But it would be better to work hand-in-hand, and one of the purposes of this workshop is to examine whether we can make progress in this direction within the existing legal and administrative framework.
Mr. Theos has already said, and I would like to say it again, that we have five years ahead of us to prepare for another world after enlargement when very probably a large part of Greek territory will no longer be eligible for Objective 1. And we all hope that, because that is a sign of success. But that means that the types of structural actions that we will be funding in Greece will very likely be completely different from the types of actions that we are familiar with today. They will be much more orientated towards the kind of actions that you see in the URBAN initiative, the kind of actions that you see in the innovation projects, the kind of actions that you are developing in the integrated rural programmes. These will be the mechanisms for the delivery of development in all probability in Greece beyond 2006. And we have to build the capability in the coming years to deliver this kind of policy in Greece.
You will hear examples today from countries which have different realities from yours, where medium-sized cities of 100-200,000 people have their own strategy of economic development, their own strategies for social inclusion, and have a credible range of policy tools to deliver those strategies.
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And they have sufficient resources under local and regional control to give real effect to them. This reality, of course, is not Greece’s reality today but it may be possible to examine whether, in addition to preparing the mechanisms within the existing structures, it may be possible to start a discussion about another institutional and legal reality in Greece in four or five years’ time. This horizon may seem far away to us today but it is tomorrow in terms of administrative reform, as you all know.
We want to encourage a debate from the floor today so we have tried to limit the number of speakers, although we have quite a few, but we have asked them to be short, and I will be short too. And we want you to join in the debate. We encourage you very much to do that. So please participate after the introductions and we will try to get as stimulating and as interesting a discussion as we possibly can. Thank you very much.
Ms.L.VERSTRAETE: Thank you very much. I will also try to be short, because I think in fact it is important that we have an exchange of views, and not just presentations.
I think it is commonly agreed that local governments and local agencies are becoming key partners in delivering economic development across Europe. There is also a political consensus to strengthening the local dimension of the European Employment Strategy through the elaboration of local action plans, and I hope this will be one of the major points for discussion today: how to establish and how to implement local action plans. This is based on the consideration that the success of employment policies mainly depends on the mobilisation of local people, and there is now a need to shift from individual local development initiatives, which have their own merit and which are a necessity, to more integrated, coherent, local approaches and local strategies. Now, the current Structural Funds regulation provides considerable potential for the development of these local initiatives through the regional programmes, in Greece, for instance, for the period 2000-2006. However, a local strategy for employment and for development is not just about spending. We really should focus on how to achieve a common effort, how to achieve a common thinking, how to achieve innovation and coordination of effort. In essence, it’s not about more spending but about better spending and creating better and stronger partnerships.
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We therefore strongly encourage local and regional authorities to develop strategies for employment through local action plans for employment and for social inclusion, and to promote the appropriate partnership arrangements between all the people involved. Local development and the local dimension of the European Employment Strategy, through the establishment of local action plans, can help us to build together a platform for more effective and sustainable development at the local level, to create more and better jobs. That is the essence of what this workshop is about, to connect you, as regional and local authorities, as regional and local decision- makers and managers, and also to connect the national and European strategies to what is done at regional and local level.
Our aim today is not to advocate the importance of the local level of development. We are here to do more than that. We should examine how we can make this happen, how we can use the existing mechanisms to make it happen, how we can build on what exists, because it is obvious that we are not starting from scratch. A lot has been done in the past. Examples can be given of successful implementation through the Territorial Employment Pacts. Others have been less successful, but still it is important to build on the strengths and weaknesses of previous experiences and to try to learn from them and to continue the work that has been done. Of course, at the same time we must look at better ways to make it happen and try to adapt the mechanisms for future development. It is essential that at the end of the day we can say that we have used this meeting and the expertise that is gathered here to make full use of the conclusions of this meeting. This is really the agenda.
Let me now put some questions to you that we should perhaps try to address today. How can we best define and highlight the roles and responsibilities between and across levels, that is, between local authorities in a partnership agreement as well as between local, regional and national authorities? What is there to be done now to fully exploit the existing institutional framework and mechanisms in the short run, to be able to implement local development actions and local employment as soon as 2002, so that we can achieve the challenges that have been put in the third CSF, and how can we improve this later on?
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How can national authorities better involve regional and local people and local authorities in the development and implementation of the National Action Plans for employment and for social inclusion? How can all people in the regions, at the local level, work together, and how can they be mobilised, how can we pull together these people and public employment services, with training providers, with enterprises, with the social partners? How can we also ensure that organisations are involved, people are involved, that take into account the necessity for equal opportunities in these actions? Finally, how can good practice be identified, validated and transferred? Because there is good practice, so we need to make it known to everybody and to see how it can be transferred to others.
It is clear that there is a huge diversity of approaches to local action, as there are diverse employment and labour market situations and institutional contexts in Europe. There is also a clear European trend towards local development. We should now examine how this trend can be adapted to the context of the Greek labour market and how we can also make it happen in Greece. This is really what we should discuss today, and I hope to work on these subjects with you during the day to come, so that we can establish clear conclusions that will make our work more concrete and more successful in the future. Thank you very much.
Mr.R.SHOTTON: I would like to invite the steering committee to introduce the Managing Authority of the Community Support Framework.
MR. N. KOMNINIDIS: Thank you, Mr. Shotton. I’d like to thank Mr. Kolyvas on behalf of all people named Nikos in this room. I think that all the people named Nicolas here realise the seriousness of these issues and the innovative nature of these issues. So it is very important for us, and this is why we are working today although it is a name-day for Nicolas.
The Managing Authorities of all the regional programmes are, at this time of the year, planning the implementation of these activities, so it is a very, very timely moment. In the Programme Complements, we have defined the general procedures on the basis of which we will implement these actions in our regional programmes. However, the difficulties start only today, because it is a different thing to theoretically plan something, and to put into practice
11 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 these actions, which are quite innovative. Of course, planning dates back a long time. On the one hand, there was the regional development plan, where the notion of innovation was included as of the analysis stage. Innovation was clearly present in the strategic choices. On the other hand, there is the European Union; the indicative guidelines for the development of Objective 1 regions pertain to all these issues, that is, innovation and local employment initiatives, which date back to the second CSF, when the Local Territorial Pacts existed at an experimental stage. Now some conclusions have been drawn and some of the initiatives in these Local Territorial Pacts have been simplified. As regards the integrated urban development and rural development actions, the emphasis is on mainstreaming the actions of the URBAN and LEADER initiatives. So there are some converging directions that show an interest in these issues, which is necessary at the level of local development. These actions are included in the overall plan of every Regional Operational Programme. There is no homogeneity between the 13 Regional Operational Programmes, but we know that a Regional Operational Programme consists of various initiatives.
First of all an initiative of regional networks, infrastructures and productive processes, where we have measures linked to innovation, that is, issues pertaining to the major development guidelines for each region. There is a second initiative on actions in the urban space in general – buildings, environment, social infrastructure, human resources and actions generally including the integrated URBAN actions. Thirdly, there is an initiative on rural development, including the integrated actions for the development of mountainous and remote areas. These are the three priorities in the Regional Operational Programmes. There is a fourth one, depending on the particularity of each Regional Operational Programme, for instance the environment, or tourism, or human resources. However, quite often human resources issues are included in the above initiatives, and a great effort is required to put together the interventions of the various Funds in order to maximise the result with the integrated actions.
For each one of these categories of actions there are estimates in the programme complements as regards the implementation mechanisms; for local development initiatives these actions are now being planned. At the beginning of the third CSF the directions were not very clear as regards the local level. However, more and more information is being collected by the
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Ministry of Labour, on the local level, and by the European Social Fund, which allows us to have in hand now, enough material to put together these actions on the local level. Of course, all this will be developed later on in greater detail.
As regards the local employment initiatives, I will not mention the objectives because we know them. In order to successfully implement these actions, we need to have four categories of action. First of all, updating information on the local agencies, the social partners, the local businesses, and the activities of all these people. Secondly, we need to define the organisational scheme of these local employment initiatives. Thirdly, we need to identify the basic features of the categories of actions, of the population groups, of the target populations in the local community, in order to define the possibilities and skills of the population. And fourthly, we need to connect, to have a synergy of the actions, with the respective axes of the Operational Programme, where possible, in order to achieve and maintain the greatest employability.
The Ministry of Labour, in collaboration with the regions, is trying to form a more specific and more concrete framework for the implementation of these general principles. On Monday there will be a meeting on this, and we hope that this will be the start of implementation in two directions, either in URBAN integrated actions or in other forms of action on the local level.
The second category of actions is innovative actions, especially in the field of development, that is the productive sector. But in the broad sense, we can have innovative actions in the agricultural sector or in the sector of services, tourism, etc. We don’t need necessarily to have a technological industrial action, given that many of our regions have an agricultural character.
However, as a rule, the Regional Programmes on the innovation issue include actions for the creation of infrastructures for hosting and developing innovative actions, including support of research and development in research institutes and centres, support of synergy and networking between research centres and enterprises, support of technological innovation, which is using the sector of electronics, IT, multimedia, etc., and finally support of the information society as a whole. Especially for the information society, as we
13 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 will have the opportunity to see later on, we have already developed some business plans for the participation of the regions in the information society.
As regards the implementation of these actions, the main stages for the implementation of this strategy are the following: First of all, ensuring social consensus. We all know from experience how cautious we should be in remote areas. We need to analyse regional technological trends and to determine the demand for innovative actions. Secondly, we need to make an assessment of the supply of innovative services and actions, which sometimes presents a deficit. Thirdly, we need to define a framework for action. We need to define the strategic goals, the thematic fields of action, sectoral areas, and to link goals and actions. Fourthly, we need to carefully define the funding procedure, because we have actions in both the public and the private sector. Fifthly, we need to have a monitoring mechanism and publicity, which are of course a sine qua non for this type of actions.
As regards the integrated actions for urban and rural development, let’s first look at urban development. Of course, we start from a public call for tender by the managing authority of the Operational Programme on the basis of the various categories of criteria that we have in the programme complements, as well as the specifications published by the Monitoring Committee, and there are social, economic and environmental criteria. Therefore we ask the local authorities to submit an offer in the form of a draft Operational Programme for financing a group of actions which will constitute an integrated approach and which will include: the current situation, the features of the area, the main scopes of intervention, the actions and initiatives proposed to be funded, the anticipated impact on the area, and of course the agency that will implement this proposal.
On the basis of these initial business plans, the managing authority makes an evaluation of the proposals and makes a report to the managing authority of the Regional Operational Programme. It is a rather open procedure, where the local agencies must know as of the beginning that there are certain criteria, which are mainly social, while there is also a prospect for development, that is, we are not only talking about social criteria. We need to have areas where economic activity can develop in one form or another. The final selection is made on the basis of the criteria and on the basis of the specifications. Then we go on to the second stage, that is, the elaboration of
14 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 the detailed business plan, with the submission of technical sheets, etc., etc. So in order to implement these measures, the final beneficiaries will submit detailed proposals on the basis of receiving some technical support from the regions and the various agencies.
As regards more specifically the rural sector, the issues of governance on the local level will constitute a subject per se so I will not go into this now.
As regards the integrated actions in mountains and underprivileged areas, we know that there are similar actions in the national sectoral programme on agriculture. There is a corresponding part in each region to the extent of approximately four per cent of each Regional Operational Programme, devoted to integrated actions mainly in the mountainous areas. Plains can also be included, where the agricultural activity demands restructuring, as well as remote insular areas.
So the criteria for mountainous zones are similar. In order to try to be brief I will not go into depth here. I think we will have the opportunity to discuss them a bit later on. Thank you for your attention.
Mr.R.SHOTTON: Thank you very much, Mr. Komninidis. Now I’d like to invite Professor Lacave to present the French experience. As you know, there are some parallels between the organisation of the Greek administration and the organisation of the French administration. I wouldn’t like to exaggerate them, but there are some parallels. Thank you.
PROF.M.LACAVE: Thank you, Mr. Shotton. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I am just waiting for the technical aspects to be solved, so whilst waiting, here are some short introductory words. My presentation will deal with political and institutional engineering, and I will try to provide you with a balanced approach to this experience, not neglecting what can be reasonably criticised in this experience.
I will present a case study of what we call in France contractual relations between the state and the regions, which is an experience and not a model. And I say that because, as you will see later on, I will have some criticisms of the system. As you probably know, France is traditionally centralised, and has been a heavily centralised country, with a very large role
15 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 assigned to Préfets, assisted by what we now call Secrétaires Généraux à l’Action Régionale, in the regions, which are in charge of regional planning and, at the same time, of regional development and management of EU Structural Funds. However, in ’82-’83 there were a set of decentralisation laws, with three objectives. The first was to enlarge the competencies of local and regional authorities. The second was to give executive power to the presidents of regional councils and the presidents of Conseils Généraux, that is to say, the infrastructure-regional level. And the third objective was the creation of what is the focus of my presentation, that is to say, Contrats de Plan État-Region (CPER), contracts regarding planning between the state and the region.
The first generation of CPERs took place in ’84-’88, and the principle was for the CPERs to be co-financed by the state and the regional authorities. Then in ’88 came the EC reform of Structural Funds, and immediately the French government decided that there would be a strict connection in the schedule, in time-planning, between the CPERs and the Community Support Frameworks, later on, Single Programming Documents, because the French government decided to switch from the CSF process to the SPD process. This connection has broadened the contractual perspective. During this first generation, the Integrated Mediterranean Programmes that you also know in Greece were in operation and from that time there was a connection between the Integrated Mediterranean Programmes and CPERs, and I was personally in charge of some parts of CPERs regarding innovation and technology transfer.
Generally speaking, the experience of CPERs is positively perceived by French politicians. Of course there are recurring criticisms, but I would say that they are partly rhetorical. And generally speaking, they are, I would say, happy with them, in spite of some criticism. The CPER experience is not at all a typical French experience because the French like theory and theoretical aspects very much, but in fact if you examine this experience you will see that it’s extremely pragmatic.
The law defines CPERs as “agreements for pluriannual programming of the financing of priority actions concerning territorial development,” what we call in France aménagement et développement du territoire. As all of you know very well, there was a general move in Europe toward decentralisation
16 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 to the benefit of the regions. You have the list of what happened in various countries. I think that what was important maybe for you in the Greek context is that the decentralisation reform in France didn’t need any constitutional reform, in part because there was no devolution of legislative power to the regions, and the process was very flexible and rather progressive. But it was progress, even flexible and pragmatic, etc. Anyway, the CPERs and contractualisation meant clearly a rupture with the top-down model of planning and aménagement du territoire by the state. And this must not be underestimated. Now, and in fact from 1984, state and regions are supposed to be equal partners, selecting together common priorities for regional and territorial development.
The contents of my presentation are: the rationale of CPERs, the role of the state, negotiation of priorities to be co-financed, and finally the connection between the CPERs and Structural Funds.
The rationale of CPERs. CPERs, as defined by the law, lead to a reciprocal, mid-term financial commitment by the state in each region, with contractual clauses, having as an objective the selection of current priorities for the economic, social and cultural development of the region and territory. And of course in consequence there has been this natural connection of Community Support Frameworks with CPERs, and with Structural Funds adding a third financial instrument to national and local/regional financing. As a principle, priorities have to be selected, taking into account the national plan and the regional one, through a process of what we call in France concertation, that is to say, at the same time consultation and consensus- building with key people at regional level, the key points being the identification and selection of priorities, resulting from a prior strategic and prospective exercise, the updating of the priorities, and the concertation, both within the region and between the state and the region.
Now let us check the combination of three basic principles, apart from the key points that I mentioned previously. Contractualisation, planning, and territorialisation. And, through the review of these three principles, we will check some of the realities confronting the theory and the law. Contractualisation: Is there a real equality between contracting parties for selecting common priorities and agreeing upon joint financing commitments? We will check it. Planning: There is no longer a national plan in France
17 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 today. It doesn’t exist any more, because of a lack of credibility due to a stronger confidence in market forces and vehicles of economic liberalism that you know about of course. So, what? Since there is no more national planning. The third principle is territorialisation: The old top-down approach of our Ministry for Regional Development – DATAR is not the same approach or Ministry today; DATAR was created in 1963 during the de Gaulle period. This old top-down approach was replaced in the mid-eighties by a much less ambitious objective of supporting local regional development. So there is no national plan, there is no pluriannual document of regional planning and aménagement du territoire. So what? We shall try to get some answers to that.
Within the framework of this question about principles, conflicts of interest and oppositions of objectives between the state and the regions are supposed to be resolved through negotiated solutions, and arrangements achieved are supposed to allow both partners to agree on a set of priorities selected both scientifically and democratically. Scientifically means through prospective studies, strategic studies, etc.; democratically means through consultation, consensus-building and the famous concertation between key people.
In ’91-’93 there were some innovations regarding the role of the state. The planning deficit that I mentioned two minutes ago, that is to say, the fact that a national plan no longer exists, has been filled by a short document of no more than 15-20 pages – prepared by the Préfet de Region, the name of which is “Strategy of the State for the Region” resulting from two inputs: working groups set up at regional level by the Préfet, with the major key people: politicians, businesses, universities, etc., and DATAR prospective studies at national level. This short document of 15-20 pages, which is a kind of regional bible, is prepared through concertation and consensus-building with key people. Secondly, innovation: There was a deconcentration move – not decentralisation, deconcentration this time – from the state administration level to the Préfets de Region and the SGARs, Secretaires Généraux à l’Action Regionale, giving more direct power to them. That is to say, more things could be decided in the region and less in Paris. And thirdly, it was decided that regional disparities have to be taken into account in the allocation of state fundings through Contrats de Plan État-Region, what we call in France péréquation.
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In 1993, three operational rules for the negotiation of CPERs were introduced, and I think that with this part we enter directly into the very practical aspects of the mechanisms. Firstly, before the negotiation starts between the state and the region, the state indicates the global amount of the allocation it intends to give to its regions, what we call the enveloppe. Secondly, this state allocation, this enveloppe, is divided in two shares. One is the hard share, 75 per cent of the total amount, which is allocated to non- negotiable priorities of the state. So it’s a kind of lion’s share, in a sense, because these priorities cannot be negotiated. And we shall see later on what the object of the negotiation is, if there is one. And the second share is a soft share of 25 per cent of the allocation, which is assigned to projects coming directly from the region. The third operational rule: The state must own the implementation of the criteria concerning the reduction of regional disparities.
And there are two major problems at that time. The first, which is not very surprising, is that there is often a gap between the strategy and the financial plan, the financial document that we call Plan d’Action Chiffré, which follows. Because of course during the negotiations that take place between the state and the region, the tendency of not only the state but of the regional key peoople as well is to forget a little bit of the strategic axes for the benefit of classical horse-trading. Secondly, and this is very important for us in France, the final financial plan is dependent upon the sectoral logics of the various national Ministries in Paris. The hard share, the 75 per cent, for non- negotiable priorities of the state, becomes a kind of black box, which is negotiable not with the region but between the sectoral Ministries and the Préfet de Region, and there is some lobbying by regional politicians to get a wider allocation for the state.
So let me remind you of the two basic principles in the negotiations. Projects have to be selected according to common priorities. Regional disparities have to be taken into account, with three types of regions, rich, normal and poor. Non-negotiable priorities, the hard share, the famous 75 per cent, what happens with them? What is the objective of the state? The objective of the state for the hard share is to get the financial counterpart from the region. So the state says “I have non-negotiable priorities, but you have to give the money.” And the bargaining starts there, because you have a check- and-balance mechanism between the hard share and the soft share. And of
19 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 course there are a lot of protests coming from local and regional politicians: fake negotiation, negation of decentralisation, etc. But it’s partly rhetoric, because what’s lost in influence on one side is gained on another side.
In fact, the reality is more complex. That is to say, the prevalence of the states is not so important as it would appear at first glance. Firstly, the state is often lobbying for projects, and not only for money, not only for having the financial counterpart of the hard share. Secondly, the state, and in fact the Préfets de Region may actively support projects prepared and defended by local politicians and key people for various reasons, which can be political reasons, strategic reasons, whatever. And this last point is very important: The state may support projects in the name of national interest, leading to contractualisation in the Contrats de Plan État-Region, programmes which are in theory the exclusive competence of the state. The best example is Plan Université 2000. The regions in France have absolutely no competence in higher education and universities, but because the state has started to ask for money from the regions it has, in this way, given to the regions some power of influence over the development of the higher education and university system. So you see the system is rather complex, because the state has learned to give some power, specifically in state competencies, to the regions. Finally, the state has room for manoeuvre through an always possible increase of its financial allocation to the regions, on a case by case basis. The consequence is that the Préfet, though an official representative of the state, may be led to make alliances with regional politicians and key peple, in order to have more influence on Ministries in Paris. And you have a rather subtle mechanism or system of checks and balances.
A criticism about negotiation of priorities, regional disparities and péréquation: The natural tendency of the state is to put into Contrats de Plan État-Region projects and actions that the regions are prepared to co-finance, which means that the richest regions are in fact privileged, those which have the money, and it is the opposite of the logic of reduction of regional disparities. It benefits the richer regions, which can pay for projects, which can pay for the counterparts to the projects proposed by the state. And it’s very easy to verify the financial statistical data.
One last point, the connection between the Contrats de Plan and the Structural Fund. As I said previously, the French government decided very
20 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 soon to establish a strict linkage between CPER pluriannual programming and Structural Fund cycles, ’89-’93, ’94-’99, 2000-2006. And it was recently confirmed by a circular of the Ministère de l’Environnement et de l’Aménagement du Territoire, of January 2000. Since ’94, France has adopted the SPD system instead of the Community Support Framework. It’s easy to see, through what I presented before, that there is a coherence between the major principles of the ’88 reforming of Structural Funds and the basis on which the CPERs were founded. Subsidiarity, because power of initiative has been given to the regional level, additionality, because there is co-financing, partnership, the famous concertation, consensus-building, etc., and programming because it’s pluriannual, it has a strategy, etc. So Contrats de Plan and the SPD are complementary instruments for the implementation of policies of territorial development. CPERs constitute the framework for the national financial counterparts to Structural Funds, and the French government can say to the Commission that the projects co-financed are a result of contractual procedures complying with the four principles that I presented in the last slide. But there is a flaw that I am obliged to mention. The French government has some tendency to consider EU money as part of its share in Contrats de Plan État-Region. In Contrats de Plan État-Region you have state money, regional money, and the state considers that EU money is national money. But this is another question.
The reform of Structural Funds has surely stimulated the role of regional players in the triangular game played by the Commission, the state and the regions, and it has surely strengthened the move toward decentralisation and contractualisation. However, and this is a paradox, the regional level itself, that is to say, the regional councils and their presidents, have not totally benefited from this move. I must be very careful about that, and I have to explain it. In fact, we have three major beneficiaries. The first is the national level, DATAR, our Ministry for Regional Development. It has recovered a strategic position in the French state administration, as the mediator and principal negotiator regarding Structural Funds. The second beneficiaries: Préfets de Region and SGARs. They are the major winners because they hold the financial keys not only of the CPERs but of the Single Programming Documents at regional level as well, and they are responsible for territorial diagnosis and the relevant strategy. The third beneficiaries: Surely the local and regional key players, within the system of horse-trading, bargaining, checks and balances, etc. Chambers of commerce, federations of
21 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 industry, universities and research institutions, infraregional political level, such as Conseils Généraux, that is to say, the Département level, are considered as privileged partners for bargaining.
Let us look at the circular of January 2000: Firstly, the role of the Préfets de Region as the Managing Authority, according to the new SF regulation; secondly, the strengthening of the partnership with all the local authorities participating in the financing of the Plans, and all key players involved in the implementation; thirdly, the convergence of objectives, agendas, timetables, between Contrats de Plan État-Region and Structural Funds, Single Programming Documents, as a result of a political decision of the French government.
Conclusions. First: In my country, it was very important, because it was centralised, to establish a common ground between the state and the regions for projects resulting from common priorities and selected through a common process, that is to say, the institutionalisation of a negotiation process and a new model of public management of regional development. That was extremely important. Second conclusion: There was some tendency of the French state to re-centralise in the ‘90s, but this backward process is probably softening now. Third conclusion: There is no longer in France a top-down national bible, national plan, pluriannual document of Aménagement du Territoire. It doesn’t exist any more. We have only this strategy of the state for the regions that I mentioned, with contributions from local and regional players. Fourth conclusion: One of the major problems is the gap between this strategy and the financial plan. But it’s not surprising. Fifth conclusion: Checks and balances during the negotiations allow for maximum flexibility. This leads, in some cases, as I cited for universities and higher education, to contractualisation of state competencies and “hidden” devolution of state competencies to the regions, and support of the Préfets to local regional innovative projects. Sixth conclusion: The reform of Structural Funds has strengthened the move towards negotiation and contractualisation, to the benefit of local and regional key players. Seven: CPERs and SPD are closely interrelated at the strategic and financial levels, and Eight: Through CPERs and later Community Support Frameworks and Single Programming Documents, the French state has officially recognised as a fact the interests of the regions as being distinct from state interests. It has recognised the
22 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 plurality of partners and players, and it has recognised the local and regional specificities.
I am, of course, at your disposal for any questions during the debate. Thank you very much.
Mr.R.SHOTTON: Thank you very much, Professor Lacave. And our last speaker before the coffee break is Professor Michaelidis, of the University of Thessaloniki, who will give us a view from Greece.
PROF.G.MICHAELIDIS: I will apologise for a very, very condensed presentation which I am going to make. Actually the aim of my presentation is not to make an exhaustive presentation but to present an open catalogue of issues, of potential possibilities and of course possibilities for discussion. And I will not enter into very, very great detail, since we will have an opportunity for discussion during the day.
There is a pre-existing situation, that is, pre-existing mechanisms. Since we are talking about the integrated development regional and local plans, the main issue is first of all how infrastructure projects are implemented for the public interest. On the basis of pre-existing mechanisms, these are the responsibility of the state, mainly the central state, and regional mechanisms can only implement these projects after this responsibility has specifically been legally transfered. And most of the time they don’t have the right to concede this responsibility to others. Of course there are specific categories of projects and infrastructures which can be implemented by non-state entities but always with a specific institutional framework: either the establishment of subsidiary companies of the state, or the concession of the construction along with the exploitation, or the privatisation of public utilities which have been operational in the sector of public infrastructure, or the so-called transformation of the concept of public interest to a collective private interest, for instance, private land planning or the industrial and business areas. Of course, these mechanisms remained at the national level and they did not pass onto the regional level. At the regional level, the implementation mechanism for infrastructure projects is still the traditional one.
So for the regional or local development projects, where apart from soft actions, etc., we have a great number of infrastructure projects, we had to
23 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 invent a combination of mechanisms. We needed to have a specific provision in the legislation on investment incentives or a Presidential Decree, while the management would be assured by a state entity, for instance, the General Secretariat for Research and Technology, or the mechanism of a programming contract, a state entity, a local authority, a method that made it possible for a non-public agency to manage the contract and execute the project. This mechanism started in 1985. Some specific legislation provisions for actions of the Social Fund, or a joint ministerial decision, management by companies with public shareholders, and implementation of projects and actions by local authorities and private individuals, as, for instance, in the LEADER Community initiative. There is also the case of a specific regulatory provision by public law legal entities or private law legal entities, the so-called self-financed agencies. And finally we have the possibility of implementing the mechanism of global grants.
In practice, we have had some successes and some failures. You will hear about them later on. At this point I would like to stress mainly the fact that putting this framework into operation with the creation of new mechanisms a greater flexibility was provided during the previous programming period, flexibility in relation to the traditional funding circuits and procedures of the public sector.
But of course there were some risks involved, that is, delays in the projects, because we had to have the regulatory framework ready for all the types of actions, or we had management dysfunctions and delays due to the fact that the projects and actions were unified as far as planning was concerned, but not as far as the management was concerned. Their management and coordination were external to the programme. These imperfections were overcome in many cases because it was made possible in the previous programming period to have a realistic programme management, which was made feasible, first of all because the Structural Funds’ regulations were more flexible in the previous period in comparison to the present one. Second, we had a shared responsibility between the member state and the European Commission, which reached up to the point of the selection of a specific project. And finally, there was a monitoring system which was not integrated but which offered the possibility on the other hand of more flexible monitoring.
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Now, what are the new requirements in the new programming period? First of all, we have specific new regulations and provisions in the text of the CSF itself, which means that every framework for the implementation of the local and regional development actions is submitted subject to more strict specifications and prerequisites, and it is expanded as far as its implementation scope goes. We also have to follow new strategic directions, a more important involvement of the private sector, both at the level of financing and of the managing effort, and we need to include the projects in a competitive procedure of projects and actions.
There is a series of developments in the national decentralisation framework. More competencies for the regions, regional services of the central administration have been annexed to the regions, regional funds were created; we have also a pooling of certain Prefectural services. Expanded local authorities’ organisations were created, with a prospect for further development.
Moreover, the existing national public investment funding system has been restructured, it provides for the collective project decisions but also the obligation to submit and keep a technical sheet. Regions, therefore, are being turned into stronger partners in the implementation of regional and local projects.
Certain problems persist, of course. For instance, we have a general framework for the establishment of development projects, which does not always comply with the new CSF framework. Law 1622, including programming competencies for the Regional and Prefectural Councils, has not been replaced by Law 2860, and the spatial planning dimension is subject to Law 1650 and 2742, the most recent one.
And finally, as regards state aid, we have a legal framework, which is being modified quite often, maybe a bit too often. The law on incentives is now being revised for the fifth time in a period of 20 years, and we have Presidential Decrees which are issued for a limited time and which are of limited force.
So we have specific issues which need to be specifically tackled in detail. Most of those, if not all, pertain to the bipolar relationship of the agency
25 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 and the financial circuit, that is, which agency and with which financial mechanism or circuit will implement the project.Another issue is how we are going to combine infrastructure projects of public interest with projects and soft actions of non-public agencies and aid to profit generating activities. Another issue: how are we going to ensure the efficient joint management, monitoring and control of the various financial circuits? A third issue: What are the most appropriate aid schemes, and can that be defined in a permanent way, or defined by the appropriate national legislation? A fourth issue: how are we going to clarify the priorities among objectives which are all in principle equally important? We need management flexibility, we need mobilisation of private resources, local and regional control, we need a positive development impact, and procedures for democratic planning and transparency. A fifth issue, on the agency mainly, is who plans, monitors, implements and controls, and in which combination? Regional or local level, central or a combination of both? How are we going to combine the mechanisms within the CSF and external to the CSF, in order to have synergy and not a conflict with the competencies? A sixth issue, which could be a solution to the previous one, is to separate, to break down the various competencies. To say, for instance, that the technical responsibility will be under the General Secretariat of Research and Technology, the managing responsibility will be under the Managing Authority, the political responsibility is with the Regional Council, the strategic responsibility under the Ministry of National Economy or Development, and so on and so forth. A seventh issue, how are we going to ensure the competitive nature of projects and actions, that is, how can we stay and be in this procedure, where the potential final beneficiary can be only one? An eighth issue: How are we going to disseminate the mechanisms which yielded positive results in the previous period? And a last point: how can all this be implemented and be efficient, without having any impact on the uptake of the resources and the achievement of the performance and monitoring indicators?.
There are certain elements, certain suggestions that we can discuss, which of course are not new discoveries; they are already under way, and certainly there are newer plans that I do not know personally. We are starting with something that is already there, that is, the decentralisation and regionalisation of the various procedures which are broadened all the time, either upon the initiative of the national legislation or as a result of the Community regional policies. This becomes an objective for a national and
26 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 even a Community strategy in order to achieve competitiveness. Where could we look for this? First of all, the issue of concentration of effort. The structure of the regional programmes by space entities or by excellent sectors, that is, where the regional economy can develop new competitive advantages, the transfer of maximum resources to the regional level, through the support of the collective project decisions and a transfer of competencies.
We have the tool of the regional funds, which, on the basis of their regulatory framework which is quite strict, can play a role, as the Ministry of National Economy plays at the level of ministries, in order to allocate, to monitor and to control the public investment programme in the region.
Another potential issue is the concretisation of the role of the various regional mechanisms that have been established under a different legal framework. We should try to see how we could have a more substantial inclusion of the regional councils and a participation of those in the decision- making process, whether it is possible to have recourse to “new” implementation mechanisms, with a reservation not to try to have a unified approach for all the regions. There is no reason for a public system which is being accused of lack of sensitivity to be replaced by another system which is equally inflexible. We have different development priorities, different levels of readiness in the various regions, and the objective is to have a bottom-up promotion of initiatives, so that implementation mechanisms can promote development.
We could also have a more specialised and global resolution of issues pertaining to aid to the companies, on the occasion of the amendment of Law 2601 on investment. All this, if we had the time, we could see in detail, in order to see the support of regional innovation. We cannot do it, however.
At this point, I would like to draw your attention to the fact that, apart from the alloy of mechanisms, the main problem in this field, that is, the support of innovation and entrepreneurship in the regions, is to create a favourable environment for innovation, so that we can develop bottom-up initiatives. We need to plan and create permanent appropriate agencies of cooperation between the regions, the enterprises, the state and all the other agencies involved. These mechanisms can be established; they are already provided for in the Operational Programmes.
27 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001
In conclusion, if we try to make a synthesis of all the concerns and the proposals that we mentioned, I think we should investigate the feasibility and the possibility of having an overall framework for the implementation of regional and local development actions which will be based on the following two pillars.
The first one is increased competence, increased responsibility of the regions in tracing and managing regional and local development policies and programmes, a sort of transfer of the subsidiarity principle from the level of the European Union-nation level to the nation-region level. And if we try to analyse this process, it has already started in Greece. What remains to be investigated further is a further transfer from the region to the local level.
And the second pillar is to encourage the promotion of all the bottom- up initiatives through a legal guarantee for all mechanisms that can be proved appropriate, effective and efficient. Thank you very much, and of course I am open to any questions.
28 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001
SESSION 1:
LOCAL EMPLOYMENT INITIATIVES
Ms.E.CHRISTOFILOPOULOU: Ladies and gentlemen, dear friends, we would like to welcome you to this first session. The topic is especially interesting and very challenging for all of us, who work not only for development but also for employment. We have the honour and the pleasure to have with us today Ms Maribel Lorenzo Barahona from the development company Bidasoa Activa in the Basque country, and Ms. Teija Raninen, a communications consultant from the Municipality of Turku, Finland, and of course the Prefect of Magnesia, Mr. Skotiniotis. All three of them will present their expertise on local employment initiatives. I omitted to mention dear Lea Verstraete, who is with us on the panel and who will contribute to the discussion. She is responsible for the geographical Unit for Greece and Spain in DG Employment. And I think she will contribute very positively to the discussion that we should have. I will start right away with this session by handing the floor to Ms. Maribel Lorenzo.
Ms.M.LORENZO BARAHOΝA: Bonjour. Je voudrais remercier les organisateurs pour m'avoir invité à participer à cette réunion. Je voudrais, avec cette intervention, vous faire part de notre expérience en termes de développement des initiatives locales d'emploi. En première partie je vais vous présenter notre bassin d’action et nos lignes d'intervention. En deuxième partie, je présenterai mon organisation, Bidasoa Activa, et ses services. Finalement, dans une troisième partie je parlerai de nos réseaux publics et privés et les projets que nous avons développés dans cette région.
Le bassin de la Bidasoa, comprend 3 municipalités: Irun, Ondavidia en Espagne et Handaye en France. Il se situe sur la frontière Nord-Ouest de l'Espagne avec la France. Un bassin, qui, du côté espagnol compte 70.000 habitants, avec un taux de chômage proche des 9%, selon le Service National de l'Emploi. Le secteur économique le plus important dans notre région est celui des services, mobilisant quelques 62% de nos ressources humaines, le secteur de l’industrie venant en deuxième position. Il faut signaler que la dimension de nos entreprises est trop petite: 3,3 personnes par entreprise.
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Bidasoa Activa est un organisme public, créé par les Conseils Municipaux de la Mairie d'Irun et de la Mairie d'Ondavidia. On travaille aussi avec la Mairie de Handaye en France au travers d'accords ponctuels et de consortia transfrontaliers.
Quant au cadre institutionnel régissant les questions liées à l'emploi, le gouvernement central a les compétences essentielles en cette matière, tandis qu’il y a 17 communautés autonomes qui ont des politiques de promotion de l'emploi, en tenant compte que certaines régions, telles Catalunia et Navarre bénéficient d’un transfert de compétences en matière d’emploi. Les municipalités n'ont pas de véritables compétences, mais elles peuvent toutefois développer des politiques locales d'emploi: à titre d’ exemple, la Mairie d'Irun consacre le 10% de son budget total pour la promotion de l'emploi et de l'économie, la promotion d'infrastructure économique, ainsi que celle de la Société de Développement Local de Bidasoa Activa, mon organisation.
Notre objectif est de soutenir et de promouvoir l'économie locale et la création d'emplois. Toutes les activités de promotion de l'économie et de l'emploi des municipalités sont menées par Bidasoa Activa. Le capital social est public, municipal, mais nous recherchons des financements auprès du gouvernement central, des instances européennes, et des autorités régionales. Le 25% du budget total de notre organisation est l’apport des mairies, tandis que pour le reste, on le puise dans des programmes financés par d'autres instances.
La principale activité dans notre bassin était l'activité douanière jusqu’en 1993, date à laquelle les douanes ont disparu des frontières internes de l’Union Européenne. Plus de 1.000 personnes se sont retrouvées sans travail. Pour faire face à cette situation on a tracé un plan stratégique et on a décidé de créer l'agence de développement intermunicipale.
Une brève description de nos activités et de nos services : nous avons prévu des services qui concernent les citoyens en général, les entreprises, les demandeurs d'emploi, avec des actions spécifiques en faveur de l'emploi salarié et des nouvelles entreprises. Pour l’emploi, il s’agit essentiellement d'information et d'orientation, tandis que pour les nouvelles entreprises on
30 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 retrouve des services de conseil et de soutien aux entrepreneurs. Nous avons un secteur entreprise et nous avons aussi mis en place des outils financiers d’aide aux jeunes entreprises. Il y a aussi de la formation, un service d'études et un service d'informations socio-économiques. Dans un souci d’efficacité, nous avons développé des outils de technologie multimédia et sur la Toile, s’adressant aux entreprises, aux créateurs d’entreprises et aux demandeurs d'emploi.
Nous avons créé un site sur la Toile, qui se voudrait le site par excellence du développement économique et social de la région. Les utilisateurs y trouvent des informations, mais aussi des services en ligne. Un autre site sur la Toile est celui de Bidasoa Activa on line entreprises, qui met en réseau les entreprises de Bidasoa Activa pour satisfaire à leurs besoins d'information et afin, aussi, de faciliter la connaissance et l'utilisation des technologies nouvelles de l'information et communication.
On a développé aussi une pépinière dont l'objectif est de fournir aux entrepreneurs de l'assistance technique on line. Nous avons aussi développé d'autres outils multimédia comme un outil multimédia d'utilisation et d'informations pour la recherche d'emploi, un autre outil qui permet de réaliser un autodiagnostic personnalisé en gestion d'entreprise, et un programme d'incitation à l'esprit d’entreprise. Ces outils ont été mis en place dans le cadre de projets intégrés dans des programmes européens tels que INTERREG, NOW, HORIZON, etc. pendant les 5 a 6 dernières années. Toutes ces activités et ces outils se sont développés dans le cadre de la collaboration public-privé. De cette façon nous avons créé divers réseaux où sont impliqués Bidasoa Activa, des associations, des centres de formation, des entreprises, des syndicats, des services publics d'emploi aussi et des entités financières, selon le type de réseau considéré chaque fois.
Voilà l'organisation que nous avons dans le bassin : Nous avons un bureau de formation, dont l'objectif est de mettre en oeuvre une stratégie de formation à l’unisson avec le Centre de formation du bassin, ainsi qu’avec l’autorité régionale basque. Il existe un autre réseau, la fondation ITC, dont l'objectif est de promouvoir la formation professionnelle pour les employés des branches du transport et du commerce, au vu de leur grande importance dans notre bassin : les membres de ce réseau sont des entreprises et les centres de formation. Il existe aussi un réseau de qualité des services
31 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 touristiques qui réunit un certain nombre d’ établissements. Dans notre bassin le tourisme est aussi un secteur de poids, et parmi nos membres il y a des entreprises touristiques, des consultants, et des experts ès qualité.
Bidasoa Activa est présente dans tous les réseaux. Il y a une table ronde d'orientation qui oeuvre pour consolider les stratégies qui facilitent le passage de l'école au travail. A cette table ronde participent les syndicats, les centres de formation, ainsi que le Service National de l'Emploi.
Il y a un autre réseau qui est le Fonds de garantie, dont l'objectif est de soutenir les initiatives des entreprises du bassin qui ne disposent pas de garanties autonomes. Un organisme financier réunit les entreprises les plus importantes de notre bassin, en ayant comme vocation d’aider les petites et les nouvelles entreprises. Puis, il y a Bidasoa Activa on line Entreprises. Nous y retrouvons 85 entreprises aujourd’hui, au sein de ce réseau qui vise à promouvoir l'utilisation des nouvelles technologies entre les entreprises.
Ces réseaux ont été mis en place pendant les 5 dernières années, ayant comme fin des activités concrètes, des projets concrets. Ils continuent encore, mais nous pensions que c'était nécessaire d'avoir un réseau fort pour développer plus outre la réflexion et la définition des stratégies à suivre, ainsi que les actions concrètes pour promouvoir l'emploi, et, par voie de conséquence, l'économie de notre bassin.
C'est la raison pour laquelle on a commencé à travailler pour organiser un vaste réseau avec des syndicats et des entreprises, sachant, comme il a été dit plus haut, que les entreprises de notre bassin sont très petites. Il n'existait pas d'associations d’entrepreneurs ou de chambres de commerce et d’industrie au niveau local. De plus, leurs activités sont très variées. Il apparaissait comme extrêmement difficile de réussir, au niveau du réseau, une représentation de toutes les entreprises.
On a dès lors, mis en place deux réseaux, "le Pacte pour l'Emploi" avec les syndicats, et "le Forum Economique", avec les entreprises. Notre objectif à terme est celui d'avoir un seul réseau, ce qui est difficile aujourd’hui. Le Forum Economique se veut un point de rencontre entre entreprises, un moyen de réflexion sur les stratégies et les grands projets des entreprises, mais aussi, et c’est important, un levier efficace pour stimuler la création d'une
32 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 association d'entreprises, ce qui a été fait, avec aujourd’hui, quelques 70 entreprises impliquées dans ce réseau.
D'autre part, Bidasoa Activa et les syndicats sont associés dans le cadre du Pacte pour l'Emploi, sachant que des entreprises, comme d'autres instances, des centres de formation et des associations, participent dans les actions concrètes. L'objectif du Pacte est d'avoir un outil qui nous permette de réaliser les activités au niveau local dans une stratégie générale, dans une stratégie de promotion de l'emploi et de l'économie du bassin. Nous décidons ce qui doit être fait, et par la suite, on recherche des possibilités de financement dans les divers programmes nationaux, européens et régionaux. Nous faisons toutefois tout notre possible pour mener à bien des activités que nous considérons comme étant indispensables pour notre bassin. La participation des mairies s’élève à 600.000 Euros sur 2 ans. Cet argent doit pourvoir aux activités développées, notamment celles qui ne sont pas prises en charge par d'autres instances, publiques ou privées. Effectivement, autant de financements on trouve auprès du secteur privé ou auprès d’autres organismes, autant il reste des montants disponibles pour mettre en oeuvre ou pour instiguer d'autres activités. Ces 600.000 Euros constituent la base pour promouvoir ce pacte.
On a fait une étude du marché pour voir quels sont les besoins de notre bassin et on a défini 6 lignes d'action. La ligne stratégique 1, c'est l'intervention dans la politique générale de la dimension de l'égalité des chances entre les hommes et les femmes. La ligne stratégique 2 c'est développer une proposition de coopération pour améliorer les capacités d'insertion professionnelle. La ligne stratégique 3, c'est faciliter la création, la gestion et la fusion des entreprises. La ligne stratégique 4, c'est développer activement le potentiel du bassin dans le domaine de la société de l'information, sur les fronts de la formation, la création d'emplois, avec l'utilisation des nouvelles technologies d'information et de la communication. La ligne stratégique 5 c'est de faire de ces stratégies du bassin proche du centre de San Sebastian un facteur déterminant pour la création d'emploi et le développement d'activités économiques. Et la ligne stratégique 6 définit toute l’attention à apporter aux groupes spécifiques, ceux qui ont des difficultés d'insertion à l'emploi, les chômeurs de longue durée, mais aussi la lutte contre le travail au noir et la précarité de l'emploi.
33 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001
Dans ce cadre stratégique d’action on a commencé à développer plusieurs activités. Pour donner un exemple de la coopération entre le secteur privé et le secteur public, on a mis en place un projet de portail en Basque, permettant l'accès à la Toile, auquel participent aussi bien l’autorité régionale Basque que des entreprises privées. Le budget total est de 140.000 Euros et la participation privée s’élève à 30%, la participation du Pacte à 25%, surtout en prestation de services, et la participation publique 45%. Un autre exemple de tels services est celui de la garde d’enfants de mères et de pères qui suivent des cours de formation. Ce projet aussi a des financements privés.
Sachant qu’au niveau local nous n'avons pas de véritables compétences en matière d'emploi, les mairies n'ont pas de compétences d'emploi, nous nous efforçons, en mettant en oeuvre ces projets, de promouvoir les activités que nous voulons, que nous considérons comme étant importantes en profitant des aides et des programmes au niveau régional, national et européen. Avec les projets européens on a pu innover beaucoup et expérimenter beaucoup.
Je voudrais citer quelques autres projets de la même ligne, du Pacte pour l'Emploi, ainsi que des autres lignes stratégiques du bassin, pour que vous puissiez voir comment on travaille dans les réseaux.
Un projet a comme objectif de mettre en place des dispositifs d'insertion pour les groupes sociaux qui rencontrent les plus grandes difficultés d'insertion, comme les femmes et les immigrés, en ayant surtout recours à l'utilisation des techniques et de l'apprentissage tout au long de la vie. Ici, les promoteurs du projet sont très variés, c'est Bidasoa Activa, les mairies, les centres de formation, les associations culturelles, l'association des femmes, l'association des immigrés, le centre d'entreprises, les syndicats. Ils sont séparés en divers groupes de travail, en fonction du type d'associé et de son activité.
Finalement, nous avons préparé le projet LEONET, avec une ligne budgétaire spécifique bassin, concernant la création d'un Observatoire Local de l'Emploi, l'objectif étant de diffuser la stratégie européenne pour l'emploi et échanger des expériences pratiques, pas seulement au sein de notre bassin, mais avec d'autres régions de l'Europe.
34 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001
Je vous remercie pour votre attention.
Ms.E.CHRISTOFILOPOULOU: I think that the importance of networks is already obvious. The notion of collaboration at the local level is an important issue to us and the role of new technologies is another topic which was shown, very, very appropriately, by Ms. Lorenzo’s presentation. Now let’s go to the other end of Europe, to Finland. I would like to ask Ms. Raninen to present her experience.
Ms.T.RANINEN: Ladies and gentlemen, I come from Finland, from the Municipality of Turku. I would like to thank the organisers and the European Commission for the invitation to come here today and present our initiative to promote employment.
First of all, a couple of words about our municipality, the city of Turku. Our city is located on the southwest coast of Finland. It is the oldest city in Finland and it used to be the former capital of Finland. And the name of Turku means a centre for trade and exchange. Our population in the whole region is 283,160, and the population of the city is approximately 170,000. Today I am going to talk about a local initiative to promote employment in our city. There is an unemployment rate in the city which is quite high, approximately 14 per cent, and in the whole region approximately 11 per cent. And here are some nice pictures of our city.
First of all, maybe a couple of words about our municipality system are needed. The local authorities in Finland have wide responsibilities. These include both local functions, which benefit residents, and functions specified in various laws. For example, social services and health care are mainly provided by the municipalities. More than half of the employees of the entire municipal sector work in social services and health care. Finland’s strong local self-government derives from independent taxation rights. Local authorities fund nearly half of their operations out of their own tax revenues. Tax revenues count for 53 per cent of the municipality’s income. Government grants are another source of income for local authorities, accounting for 14 per cent of their income revenues. Operating revenues make up about 26 per cent of the municipality’s income, and loans bring in about 2-4 per cent.
35 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001
Since we are talking about employment, it is essential to show how the employment issues in Finland are organised at different levels. First of all, the national level has the primary responsibility for employment and employment services. The government appropriation to create jobs is given to municipalities and government departments. At the regional level we have employment and economic development centres, which are the responsibility of the employment offices at the local level. The municipal level needs to adjust the employment measures of the municipality with the employment legislation.
And now to the project which I am going to talk about today. This project is called the LEMPA project, which means translating European Employment Strategy to the local level. The background of this project dates back to 1997, when the city of Turku got involved in the PARTNERSHIP project and Territorial Employment Pact. In fact, the unit where I work, ABONET, was created as a project, as a technical assistance unit for the Territorial Employment Pact. The Territorial Employment Pact has been very important to the city, because it has made it possible to create very good partnerships between private, public and the third sector. The coordinator of this LEMPA project was the Association of Finnish Local and Regional Authorities, and the partners in this project were the cities of Kymi, Lokya, Kayani, Kokkora and the city of Turku. This project was funded by the European Commission, DG Employment and Social Affairs. The objective of the overall project was to give information about the European Employment Strategy and to develop and test the local operational models to create a local action plan for employment.
Why did we have this project? In the European Employment Strategy, which was created in 1997, the emphasis has been placed on the local employment strategies and action plans. The Commission encourages the local levels to create their own actions plans for employment that are based on local needs. And it is at the local level where jobs are created and lost and where the effects of local unemployment are felt. In this project, all five cities involved had their own sub-projects, and they did it with the cooperation of the Association of Finnish Local and Regional Authorities. As a result, the whole LEMPA project consists of five different operational models for local action plans. And another result is the evaluation of the compatibility of
36 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 different operational models, or action models, for local action plans and the European Employment Strategy.
But now to our own project, the sub-project of the city of Turku. Employment is a very important matter to all regions in Europe. We all try to promote employment and fight against unemployment. The unemployment rate in Turku has fallen at an agonisingly slow pace, despite the recovery from the economic depression of the early 1990s. As you saw, the unemployment rate is still 14 per cent in our city. Our operational model differed from the other cities, because in our project the main aim was to create an employment strategy for the city, and we did it because we feel that we cannot create a local action plan before the city has its own employment strategy. The phases of the project were the organisation phase, where we set up a steering group for the project, which included the Mayor of the city and the highest local authorities from each sector of the city. By this I mean the industrial sector, health sector, social sector, personnel sector, education, youth, etc. And also in the steering group were representatives of the employment office; the director of our local employment office was involved, and also a representative of the Association of Southwest Entrepreneurs. These people made it possible for this work to be taken seriously, and the information needed for the analysis phase was given to us.
Here is the analysis phase. The analysis phase was broken down into the following parts: identifying the demand for labour, identifying the supply of labour, identifying the effects of unemployment and identifying investments in promoting employment. From this picture, you can see that we feel that employment cannot be treated as a separate matter but it is linked to the welfare policy, education policy and business policy. We did take into consideration the welfare policy because it is important to get new jobs for our city, but it does not take care of the unemployment situation in our city. Over half of our city’s unemployed are long-term unemployed, and creating new jobs for our city is not a solution for many of them. We need different tools and different services for the unemployed people in the city.
In the field of labour demand, we have analysed the competitiveness of the private, public and the third sector. This analysis gives us information about the present situation in the labour market and information about the future needs. Possibly the single most important factor in the field of
37 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 employment is competitiveness. That is why the competitiveness of the region’s industries and private services was explored in the project. In labour supply, we have analysed the present labour structure, the future labour structure and the effects of retirement and how this meets the labour demand. In the analysis phase of the city’s investments in promoting employment, we, the city, defined the resources and measures used for promoting employment yearly in our employment programme. The city establishes a non-binding letter of intent agreement for the treatment of unemployment with the Employment and Development Centre’s Labour Division and with the Turku Employment Office. The letter of intent agreement mainly defines the division of labour and the investments on jointly implemented labour policy actions. The employment appropriation of Turku for the year 2001 is 34.6 million Finnish marks, which is approximate six million euros, of which 4.5 million Finnish marks is for summer jobs for young people. The government compensation sum is 23.7 million Finnish marks. Then we analysed the effects of unemployment on a person and on the economy and the services of the city. By this I mean the costs that arise from unemployment, for example in the health and social sector.
We have also clarified the roles of different departments in the city with regard to employment matters. This is very important, because the truth is that cities and municipalities have more responsibilities regarding employment than before. From these analyses we have drawn conclusions and now we are at the phase of making strategic selection. This selection and the identification of target areas for development will be done by our councillors.
Here are some examples of focal points and targets for development: In the industrial policy or business policy, focal points are, first of all, creating new jobs in the Turku region. In this, targets for development are securing the availability of competitive labour in the future, which is essential for the future employment policy challenge. The current labour reserve is not sufficient for the main occupations’ demand. Therefore measures to secure the growing demand should be taken. The second target for development is the anticipation system for the strategic fields which should be developed in such a way that will allow the needs of labour demand and know-how to be recognised yearly and early enough. With qualitative anticipation, the availability of labour demanded by the growing industries can be shared. The city of Turku has made a strong choice and wants to focus on bio-industry,
38 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001
ICT and logistics. In the welfare policy, the focal points are reducing expenses resulting from employment. The targets for development: the city must determine the costs deriving from unemployment in the different branches of the administration. And another example: the unemployed heavy users of social and health services must be identified. Cooperation between administration branches must be established to evaluate these clients’ ability to work. Appropriate steps must be taken to enhance the clients’ situation. The targets for development are turned towards the future for active measures, by matching the overall strategy of the city of Turku and the European Employment Strategy. After these conclusions from these analyses, we have made a strategic selection and we have identified the targets for development. And now we also have preparatory measures for a local action plan for employment. It is this process that is very important.
As a result of this project, first of all we have an employment strategy for the city, and we have an operational model to create a local action plan for employment. We have also made a project proposal for development, piloting and monitoring the implementation of the employment strategy of the city. In the future there will be active measures and we will have a local action plan for employment.
Now you probably wonder: where is the national action plan, and what will happen next? Here is the analysis from the industrial policy, education policy, welfare policy and personnel policy. We have now identified and clarified the targets for development. Previously we have had a letter of intent agreement with the Employment Office and the Employment and Development Centre, which is under the Ministry of Labour. Now we have had negotiations with the regional authorities that we will have a wider letter of intent agreement. Earlier it was only made with the labour division. Now we will have an agreement with different divisions, divisions under the Ministry of Trade and Industry, Ministry of Education, Ministry for Social Affairs and Health. And we will have also negotiations at the national level with the ministries, and through the negotiation process we will have a local action plan, operations and of course there is a need for monitoring and evaluation.
Ladies and gentlemen, I thank you for your attention.
39 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001
Ms.E.CHRISTOFILOPOULOU: Thank you very much, Ms. Raninen. I think you showed us the importance of analysis in politics and in policy-making. I think there is a lot to ask Ms. Raninen after the end of the presentations. And I would like to ask Mr. Skotiniotis to take the floor, reminding him that it is very important that we have an elected Prefect present among us. Mr. Skotiniotis is the elected Prefect of Magnesia, and I think he will give us the point of view of the mobilisation of the local community.
Mr.P.SKOTINIOTIS: I think I couldn’t do otherwise. Thank you. In a recent presentation, Ms. Diamantopoulou, the Commissioner for the issues we are talking about, employment that is, said that in our era of globalisation where everything moves freely and we have economies which are closely dependent upon each other, we are noticing an explosion of local development and of local planning. So these two things move hand in hand.
We have no illusions, so we cannot have the expectation that a local authority or a local initiative has the opportunity to solve the major global problem of our era. The solution of this problem depends on a series of factors, and most of the time we can only have a minimal impact on these external factors. We are living in an era where the trend for globalisation of markets and for supranational integration processes goes hand in hand with the trend for decentralisation and the reinforcement of the role of local and regional authorities in questions of employment. For those of us working in local authorities therefore, it is a major question and it is a question of social responsibility, and we must use every possibility for the development of new jobs. Even one single job is very important. In this way, it is very important for us to work towards the inclusion of binding indicators on the national and European level concerning the Territorial Pacts, for instance. Our regions have implemented and are still implementing local territorial pacts for employment, and mainly these pacts were implemented in regions with high rates of unemployment. This process brought to the same negotiations table for the first time first and second-tier local authorities, workers, farmers, local employment agency offices, women entrepreneurs, all those involved in the local productive category. The territorial pacts must be a voluntary scheme of collaboration, aiming at promoting employment in viable and competitive productive activities. The territorial pacts must seek the best possible situations for entrepreneurial activity in order to increase employment.
40 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001
A territorial pact is a pact meaning collaboration among specific sectors, where every contracting party has something to offer. Eighty-nine regions in the European Union were selected in a pilot phase for the implementation of this initiative. Seven out of these regions were Greek regions. Magnesia was one of these regions, and we started this activity at the end of 1997. Magnesia is a prefecture with a long industrial and commercial tradition, and in the middle of the ‘80s, for at least ten years, it went through a very important crisis of de-industrialisation, which left very important marks on the social fabric. And this also resulted in an explosion of unemployment. The departmental authorities of Magnesia started their operation in 1995, that is, at the highest point of the unemployment crisis. And the local authorities took the initiative of drawing up a plan for the social and economic integration of their department, through a very broad social and political dialogue. That was a crucial option at the time. Employment was to be promoted as a strategic goal. This deeply political choice allowed us to promote, in collaboration with the national government, a series of policy measures with visible impacts. And from the first moment, we were able to make full use of the new institution of the territorial pacts.
Since October 1997, when we started with the implementation of the territorial pacts, a coordinating secretariat has been set up, and it includes the prefectural authorities of Magnesia, the Municipality of Volos and the Municipality of Nea Ionia, Labour Centre of Volos, the Association of Industries in Thessaly and Central Greece and the Chamber of Magnesia, as well as the Employment Office of Volos, the local employment agency of OAED. Technical and secretarial support is supplied by the Magnesia Development Company, which provides these services even after technical assistance stopped on the 31st of December 1999.
Under the responsibility of the coordinating secretariat, we made up a business plan which analysed the existing potential and unemployment in the region. As typical actions that were implemented in the framework of the Magnesia Territorial Pact, I could mention some actions for the utilisation of the comparative advantage of our prefecture in tourism. We supported activities in alternative forms of tourism. We set up and supported associations of women. We supported the social economy. We created a support mechanism in the farming sector, and we created a network of small companies specialised in gold and silver work. We faced a lot of problems
41 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 during this first pilot phase. We had a lot of difficulties in monitoring and coordinating the actions, because we didn’t have the appropriate personnel. And very often these actions were implemented because only a very few individuals were capable, and they took up all of the work load.
On the regional level the territorial pacts were integrated into the Regional Operational Programmes without, however, the necessary provisions, without having set up the appropriate institutional and control framework. On the national level coordination and monitoring of the pilot territorial pacts was secured by the National Labour Institute, but it was suspended at the end of 1999 and the coordinating authorities of the seven territorial pact regions and the people were left without this valuable technical assistance. Activities financed by OAED were ambitious activities, but they were not horizontal actions and they did not safeguard harmonisation with the general policy. We had a lot of difficulties; however, the basic objective was the convergence of viewpoints concerning planning and the implementation of actions. We experienced positive elements at the level of the department and at the level of the productive and social agencies, because for the first time they all sat together and discussed the problem of unemployment. Now the Coordinating Secretariat is a fundamental intervention tool for the promotion of employment in the region: a very positive point therefore, on the level of the prefecture.
The territorial pacts for the period we are talking about have achieved very important results: the creation of new enterprises, the creation of new jobs. And they have also contributed in reducing the rate of unemployment. Through the territorial pact actions, more than 1,000 new jobs were created in the whole of Greece: 70 new jobs for our prefecture, and more than 7,000 unemployed individuals were the beneficiaries of the OAED actions. These 7,000 unemployed individuals created their own enterprises, and more than 18,000 individuals were employed in businesses of the private or social sector throughout Greece. The actions of the territorial pacts were the best form of linking employment and training, since training actions were designed so that skills would be acquired for those being trained. Valuable experience was acquired by the Regional Operational Programme actions, and we received positive comments, since we had very good absorption rates in Sub- programme 9 of the Operational Programme of Thessaly. We had more than
42 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 a 90 per cent take-up rate in two years and we will have reached 100 per cent by the end of the year.
At the level of the European Union, we had the opportunity to work with and get to know people from the General Directorates of the European Union, and we had the opportunity to exchange experiences with territorial pacts of other regions.
Finally, another very positive point is that we created a single, integrated, local action plan for employment, for the years 2000-2006. We based this on an the analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of our department, and this action plan was structured on the basis of the four pillars of the National Action Plan for employment. It is very important to stress that the territorial pact must have prospects beyond the prospects of Operational Programme financing; that is, partners must constantly look for new sources of capital and for new mechanisms. The territorial pacts cannot constitute a local initiative for employment, and cannot only wait for European Social Fund financing. It must be an integrated programme which must use integrated interventions, and it is clear that for the success of this goal we need the active participation of the private sector, as well, and the private sector is still hesitant concerning the territorial pacts. We have also created a network of territorial pacts throughout Greece.
In conclusion, we would say that unemployment is a very complex problem and it can not be faced only through the territorial pacts; however, the territorial pacts can help in promoting employment, in the long term, and this can be a complementary tool.
Decentralisation is, I think, the right path to success, because the policies must be adapted to the needs of individuals. Unemployment is not only a social problem; unemployment is the personal drama of every unemployed individual and of their families. Territorial pacts must be specifically guided and oriented, and their local impact must be safeguarded. The territorial pacts must be true pacts, with the true participation of labour centres, chambers, regions, social actions and the central national employment agency. Specific modifications must be brought to the institutional framework, the legislative framework of our country, so that the territorial pacts become more effective. We must seek complementarity with
43 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 other European programmes, in order to have the best impact possible, and we need collaboration with central government, in order to better coordinate the actions. Local employment pacts and territorial pacts, must serve the goal of tackling unemployment, which is an overall goal for our country and for our society.
Thank you very much.
Ms.E.CHRISTOFILOPOULOU: We thank the Prefect of Magnesia, because he gave us, I think, on the one hand the specific results and the problems of the local territorial pact, and on the other hand he also gave us the political dimension, which is very important to us.
Two or three points on the synthesis of what we heard. First point: it is not by chance that the local dimension of unemployment is a horizontal guideline of the European employment strategy. It is exactly what Mr. Skotiniotis said very eloquently. Through the local dimension we try to respond to the problem of employment, which is being borne by policies which on the supranational level are planned and implemented, and influence the local level. Indeed, the local dimension is the area where we have to fight for the European employment strategy, and I think this was obvious in all three presentations.
However, this brings me to the second point. It is very difficult. From what we heard, we understand that it is not enough to plan. It is necessary to plan, to analyse, to build mechanisms, to monitor them, to evaluate them, but it is not enough to plan per policy sector, per policy branch. We need to have horizontal networks between sectors, and we need these horizontal networks at the local level. And this brings me to a point mentioned by Ms. Lorenzo in her presentation. She gave us the example of Spain. These networks start being implemented on a project by project basis, with an incentive, with a certain funding, etc. – these networks must be a part of daily practice. I think this is the second point for discussion. And how can we achieve these horizontal networks? Are they going to be sufficient? I am afraid they will not be sufficient, and I think this was obvious from the last presentation, because we need to have networks on the local level as well as on the national level, that is, we need to have networks among partners, social partners, and among the others, that is, all those involved in this dimension and in this
44 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 challenge of linking development and employment. A network linking the local project production mechanism and the municipality mechanism for economic development with the project for employment and training will not be sufficient. This is necessary, but it is also necessary to have all these people around the table. Mr. Skotiniotis said that. He said that they sat around the table and discussed. That is dialogue. Dialogue is very important, because it is impossible to break the isolation brought about by the information society. We are talking about a huge contrast. On the one hand, the new technologies facilitate local actions and information on the local and on the supranational level. But it is also an isolationist tool in our societies. It is very important, and I think this is the third point that we have seen in the presentations, to see dialogue at the local level and the involvement and mobilisation of all the agencies, all the bodies, all the citizens actually, all the non-governmental organisations, because all this must reach the citizens. And I think this is the next point for the discussion. And now the floor is over to you, ladies and gentlemen. Please ask questions and make comments.
Mr.Ch.SAMARAS: I am Mayor of Irakleia in Serres, and I am also here as the president of an urban, non-profit-making company, where we have the Chamber of Commerce of Eastern Macedonia. It is the local territorial pact in this area. This project covers our municipality and other neighbouring municipalities, around Lake Kerkini, which is a very well-known wetland which is protected by the Ramsar Convention. For this area we have developed a local territorial pact. We submitted it to the region in January 2000, and then it was re-submitted in October 2001. I will not enter into the detail of this local territorial pact. We have a summary here; we will hand it to the secretariat, and if anyone is interested they can see it. What we would like to say is that no procedures are yet in place. What you said and what Mr. Skotiniotis said is true: the new situation with the Capodistrias municipalities is also a fact – we have started a dialogue between populations which have never dealt with such procedures. The local societies have started to be involved in this, and they are expecting things from us, because this first contact was really shocking for them. And for us it is really very, very important and we now have time going by without things taking place. The region answers that the procedures are not open yet for these local territorial pacts. On the one hand there is the administrative part, the state administrator, and on the other hand there is the political dimension. We are called upon to defend this local territorial pact, this procedure. This is why I raise this question and make this
45 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 comment. I think it is important to others as well. We expect your intervention towards the decision-makers.
Ms.E.CHRISTOFILOPOULOU: Thank you for those comments. Is there any other question, any other comment?
Ms.G.ZEMBILIADOU: Thank you. I am the Head of the Managing Authority in Western Macedonia. We have heard very good examples from the Basque country and from Finland on local territorial pacts. Through the second CSF such projects were implemented in our regions. The problem that arises, and I would like to have an answer on that by the panellists, is how can we preserve the results of these territorial pacts? Through which mechanisms and through which monitoring procedures can these jobs be preserved?
Ms.E.CHRISTOFILOPOULOU: Thank you. Any other question or comment?
Mr.P.LINARDOS-RULMON: Thank you, Chairperson. I am an employee in the Institute of Labour, and I represent the Greek General Confederation of Labour. I would like to remind us of an interesting remark by Mr. Theos in his address, that with regard to the managing of the resources of the Structural Funds we are actually in a process of reform of practices and behaviours at the national level and at the regional level. This is a very difficult process, which is not complete yet, of course, and which is a serious issue for us, an issue that we need to discuss in detail. First of all, we have some problems as regards the quantitative evaluation and assessment of the results of the Structural Funds in our country. Unemployment remains quite high, as we know and there is a duality in the labour market and in the economy. The estimates vary, but we have unemployment which is not declared and which is quite high, and at the level of the country and in many regions we witness a dual feature in the economy. There are branches or sectors which are developed, which are growing, which are integrated in the European economy, sometimes with impressive rates, but there is also an important part of our economy, a great part, which faces serious competitive problems, which adopts various practices with a view to surviving under the new competitive conditions. We have an economy, which is developing substantially in terms of the GDP growth, but if we try to calculate the inflow of migrant workers during the last ten years we will see that the increase of productivity is not so great. So undeclared employment plays a more
46 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 important role than we think for a labour-intensive growth. We need to solve some qualitative issues. We need to say at a meeting such as this one that the problem of lack of development strategies on the local and regional level is an important problem. We have regions in Greece where declining activities are quite obvious. We see them all the time: Unemployment is high and the estimates say that it will increase, and we have not stated any long-term objectives in order to face this problem. The implementation modes on the local level present serious problems, functional problems, survival problems as regards customer relations, and of course we have this at the local and at the national level. We need to make some important changes as regards the way we manage local development. First of all, we need to have a more systematic, a more in-depth knowledge of the reality at the local and the regional level, whether we are talking about the economy or the labour market. We have not reached that point yet.
Ms.E.CHRISTOFILOPOULOU: Any other comment? Yes, please.
Mr. I. MOURATIDIS: Thank you, Madam Chair. I am the Head of Unit A in the Managing Authority of Western Macedonia. We all know that in order to be able to offer viable solutions to some problems we need to understand these problems, that is, to know the reality of these problems as accurately as possible. So I would like to ask Ms. Raninen from the project in Turku whether they have developed any methodology for recording or measuring unemployment and labour demand in the city of Turku, to what extent this responds to the reality, and whether they have built a mechanism for a permanent record of this problem, or whether all the data that you have presented to us were based on national statistical data?
For Ms. Lorenzo I would like to make a comment. I think it would be very interesting if you could provide information on how the municipalities can co-finance this project with EUR 600,000. Where do these resources come from, for the co-financing of a project? Thank you.
Ms.E.CHRISTOFILOPOULOU: Yes, Ms. Kanellopoulou, Secretary General of the region of Ionian Islands.
47 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001
Ms.T.KANELLOPOULOU: I don’t want to make an intervention; however we have been listening to some things and we need to correct some wrong impressions. Everybody in this room knows that there has been planning in order to reach the point where we are today, in order to start the implementation of some projects, in order to launch some practices, and of course the ultimate goal is to increase employment and also preserve these jobs in the future. So we cannot talk about lack of regional planning, because that would contest all the work, all the effort that has been made during these last two or three years under very strict rules, setting objectives and performance indicators. Therefore, I want to eliminate such an impression from this room. We need to stress that in every region planning for employment is based on the dynamics in each region. The economy is not static, it does not start now. The economy has certain dynamics, and on the one hand these dynamics must be preserved, and on the other hand the economy must be reinforced; it must be supported. And in order to support it, we have to use structures and means which will allow us to offer this additional dimension, which will allow us to offer this perspective. We have innovation programmes, we have the best practices, about which we are talking, about which we are listening to the speakers today. We are exchanging experience today in order to be able to support precisely this effort and to support the regional planning. So we need to take all this into account. In every region there is an action plan that offers valuable elements on employment, on the prospects of employment and the prospects of the investments that we are carrying out through the regional programmes.
Ms.E.CHRISTOFILOPOULOU: Mr. Matsingos, Secretary General of the region of the Peloponnese.
Mr. MATSINGOS: I would like to make some comments. First of all, we need to understand the term “regional development”: what does it mean and what does it mean when we are talking about a regional programme? If we look at all the regional programmes, they all have their axes, and there are specific objectives that they serve. Then we have an overall strategy, a global strategy in every programme, and we have a strategy which is combined for all the programmes. On the other hand, when we are talking about regional development and when we try to implement a project or programme, what are the objectives? What does regional development mean, and how can we measure it? The first objective is the earning of revenue and the second one
48 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 is the creation of jobs, otherwise we don’t have regional development. So it is an error to approach the whole thing in a simplistic way, without entering into the depth of regional development, without seeing what objectives it serves.
However, I would like to offer another dimension on the issue of employment. Usually we talk about unemployment and employment in industrialised or de-industrialised areas, where an important number of unemployed people exist. We forget the remote areas; we forget agricultural, rural areas; we forget mountainous areas, where a lot of people are employed in the agricultural sector, and false underemployment. We need to focus our efforts in some areas, in some regions. One of those regions is the Peloponnese, where there is a considerable proportion of employment in the primary sector. There the emphasis should be placed on actions that we are going to plan through integrated programmes, because this is how we are going to serve the basic objective, which is either to maintain the population in the mountainous, underprivileged areas, or to establish the prerequisites in order to attract investors and in order to create jobs. Thank you.
Ms.E.CHRISTOFILOPOULOU: Mr. Karatziotis, Secretary General of the region of Thessaly. I will give you the floor right away and then we will take the answers.
Mr. KARATZIOTIS: I would not take the floor if we did not have this discussion on regional planning. I think it is very, very important -and it has been one of the points of our negotiation- to talk about the negotiations for the establishment of the Regional Operational Programme and the CSF. These were exhausting procedures; we started very early, and through these procedures which we have in hand now – that is, each region has in hand, depending on the staff that we have in place – each prefecture has its own plan. And these are procedures through which the employees, the employers and other agencies– municipalities, etc. participated. There are procedures which were widely known at the national level. The first meeting of the Monitoring Committee of the CSF in ATHINAIS, where we had representatives of the employers and the employees, was an important event. And the other meetings of the committees were also very, very important. There is a national development plan right now, adjusted to the Community demands and co-financed by other agencies. We need to have all this in mind. Of course, the people present here, managing authorities, secretaries-
49 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 general, Structural Fund representatives, etc., know that we are working on the basis of a plan which is partly strict, partly loose, but on all levels we have agreed upon a development plan which starts to unfold as it is being implemented. Thank you.
Ms.E.CHRISTOFILOPOULOU: Thank you very much. Yes, you have the floor.
Mr.A.KALIATZIDIS: I have been supervising the seven pilot projects for employment for three and a half years. I think I am an appropriate person; I know both facts and practices, and I would like to ask you not to think that I am attempting to express any doubts on regional planning. Nobody would contest the work behind regional planning, and there is a lot of work which has been done on the mechanisms of support and supervision for the third CSF, both at the national and at the regional level. However, there is a problem of the timetable necessary for these mechanisms. Since we are here today in order to underline these points pertaining to the regional character, some complaints may be voiced.
The Mayor talked about a specific experience, and I would like to give my own personal experience. Every three months I had a huge problem, because it was part of my contractual obligations; every three months the Commission would come and ask me what new projects have been presented by Greece. And I had a national problem as well, because, as a Greek expert, in my quarterly report I had to write that in the last three months we didn’t have a new project and there was no new project anywhere else in Greece. This is a reality. I wouldn’t like to contradict what the Prefect said, but if we have a look at the network where Irakleia is a member as well, there are eight or nine areas, and beyond those eight or nine areas there are no other areas or regions which have worked out an action plan and promoted that plan. And I think this is a point for us to think of. All of us who have stated in the third CSF that we do promote something, perhaps we should make an analysis and not only state what we will promote; perhaps we should call upon the various bodies to submit their specific plans. I have very often heard that the procedure must now be open, the mechanisms must be created. I think these are topics well known to all of us.
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I have two questions for our foreign guests. I had the opportunity to go to Turku for the dissemination of the pacts throughout the European Union – a very successful meeting and I was very glad to participate. I have a question for you and the other speaker from the Basque country as well: How will you safeguard the viability of those actions, which started in the pilot phase and are now in the maturing phase? Could you please try and give us an answer? What do you think will happen? Will there be any multiplier effects in your region?
Ms.E.CHRISTOFILOPOULOU: Thank you very much. That was the last question, and before I give the floor to the speakers allow me to make a very brief comment. Thank you very much for all of your comments, and I think that this last comment is close to the discussions that took place in Zappeion some days ago, the discussion between the national authorities and the European Union. You know very well that for new initiatives to develop we need monitoring committees first, which will have adopted the programme complements. And I should add that everything must take place in a very democratic way. And we need all the data. I don’t want any of you to leave this room thinking that there are no quantity indicators on the physical and economic objects. We have these indicators, and you know we do. You are European Union experts, and I think you should be aware of what Mr. Meadows had called a machine failure. He had said that there could be machine problems in the machine infernale that he had mentioned. Therefore we are all partners in this process, and there is a challenge for us, and this challenge for us is that local initiatives should come out of this huge mechanism, and the citizens should benefit from this blooming of local initiatives. And this is not at all easy to do, and I would like to ask all those in charge of the managing authorities, the heads of the managing authorities, not only the head of the managing authority that took the floor. Why don’t you ask them how many calls for proposals have been prepared, how many weekends they have not seen their families in order to have this mechanism put in place. And the Mayor is right; he is absolutely right. In the discussion we will have the opportunity to see that we are very close to each other, dear Mayor. I must assure you that but both we and the European Union have made really hard efforts.
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Now I would like to ask Ms. Lorenzo and Ms. Raninen from Spain and from Finland to take the floor – and Mr. Skotiniotis, after the two ladies. Thank you.
Ms.M.LORENZO BARAHONA: Je vais tenter de répondre à l’essentiel des questions.
Une première question concerne l’origine des financements du Pacte pour l'Emploi, les 600.000 Euros. Ces fonds proviennent des mairies, des impôts locaux; nous partons de l'argent public, mais c’est uniquement une base. Par la suite il nous faut rechercher d’autres financements auprès des entreprises et d’autres organismes publics.
Un autre sujet concerne l’information et les statistiques nécessaires. Quand on décide à faire toutes ces activités et mettre en marche tous ces réseaux, on part de données statistiques. Au sein de notre agence de développement il y a un service statistique et nous travaillons aussi avec le Service Statistique national, mais il faut trouver au niveau local les données locales et les données locales dans les statistiques nationales. Nous avons mis en place un service de prospection et nous visitons constamment toutes les entreprises du bassin pour voir quels sont leurs besoins et pour y recueillir des informations statistiques brutes, le nombre d'employés, leur profil, etc. Nous avons aussi conçu un système d'information qui reprend toutes nos activités et toutes les données que nous recueillons auprès des entreprises et de leurs employés. Nous nous basons certainement aux données officielles de l'état, mais nous devons aussi mener des enquêtes locales, parce que autrement nous n'aurions pas suffisamment de données. Nous suivons aussi des indices économiques relatifs au chiffre d’affaires et d’autres paramètres de l’activité de nos entreprises que nous fournissent mensuellement ces entreprises auxquelles nous communiquons un formulaire statistique. C'est donc avec toutes ces informations qu’on commence à travailler pour formuler les projets qui se développent au sein du Pacte d'Emploi et du Forum Economique.
Ms.T.RANINEN: I will try to remember all the questions. First of all, about the partnership. I told you that the partnership, a very good partnership, was created during the Territorial Employment Pact when it started in 1997. And in this LEMPA project we have brought different operators in Turku into closer
52 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 cooperation, even in the planning stages of the procedures. This is what we did in the Territorial Employment Pact and also in this project. I think that it is important that we understand that we all need, all of us local people need each other. The private sector in Finland needs the public sector, because if we think about -first of all- the industrial policy, it is the city which is developing the operating prerequisites and competitiveness of business. It is the city, the citizens that are securing the availability of labour. We need each other. And I think that it is very important. We have negotiations every time there is a big project starting with the private and the third sector. Then how to preserve the partnership? I think that is the answer and also because we are co- operating all the time.
And then on the last question– about the measurements of the analysis and the data that we used. Yes, we did use national statistical data, but we also have local statistical data from the Employment and Development Centre, the Labour Division. And something that we learnt during this project was that there wasn’t enough information, so it is very important in the future that the city also takes part in gathering the needed data. We need anticipation. We need anticipation in industrial policy, in social policy, in health policy, in all the sectors. I hope I have answered your questions. Thank you.
Mr.P.SKOTINIOTIS: We all know that in Greece this concept of local initiatives for employment has been a new concept. This is a new concept overturning older concepts consolidated in the first and second tier of local government. So this new concept makes us work in a different way. It has not allowed us to follow the same comfortable attitude. We had the programmes for combating unemployment, which were very important; however, those programmes only included some amounts of money given to municipalities in order to combat unemployment, but they were not integrated programmes. And there is a huge distance to go till the point of formulating a local initiative. As Mr. Kaliatzidis said, there were obvious problems. I remember in December 1995 when the Committee of the Regions in Brussels made a report for the first time. There was only the Municipality of Kalamaria and the Prefecture of Magnesia present from Greece, only two representatives, because we were very hesitant in the beginning. We were not eager to work with this new attitude. Therefore, we had to reverse the concepts that we knew up to that time, and we had to accept the fact that development needs infrastructure projects as well. We needed a lot of years of work for the local
53 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 authorities, and I think that in the last years very important work has been done. We have had a lot of bureaucratic problems, the Regional Operational Programmes, the territorial pacts, the new terminology. We tried to examine all the possibilities, and we know what both sides had to go through. There were some agencies which were not state agencies, and we had huge problems with these agencies, because at some point in time we received a notification which did not allow us to use them, and so on –we had a lot of problems to go through .
What is very important is that we sat down at the same table. All of us discussed with each other. It is very important that the private sector now feels that the private actions for employment are their own case, as well, and the private sector is now being involved in these local initiatives for employment. Another very important point is that little by little the local society and the local communities, are acquiring a new awareness of their responsibilities, and I think that it is our responsibility to move even further in the third CSF. It is our responsibility to bring everybody in, as well. All the regions must be involved. Employment and unemployment will be a problem for the years to come, and we must deal with this problem. And all our policies, financial, political, action plans, will be judged on the basis of our progress in employment.
Ms.E.CHRISTOFILOPOULOU: Thank you very much, and now I would like to ask Ms. Verstraete to take the floor and close this session.
Ms.L.VERSTRAETE: Merci beaucoup. Quand j'ai pris mes fonctions et j'ai pris connaissance des documents de programmation pour la Grèce, je dois avouer que j'ai été étonnée du niveau de planification stratégique qui était présenté, et donc on ne peut certainement pas partir de l'hypothèse qu'il n'y a pas de planification, qu'il n'y a pas de programmation, loin de là. Je voudrais vraiment souligner cela comme point de départ. Cette planification d'ailleurs s'est bien traduite pas seulement au niveau des plans que l’on retrouve dans les fonds structurels en tant que tels, mais au niveau plus global, je dirais, au niveau des plans nationaux pour l'emploi, qui sont par excellence des instruments de planification concernant les mesures prises en Grèce pour le développement de l'emploi et également au niveau des plans d'insertion sociale. Donc voilà des instruments extrêmement importants qui sont là et qui tracent un cadre global. Maintenant, à l'intérieur de ce cadre il y a toutes les activités qui ont été conçues et programmées au niveau régional, il y a les
54 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 programmes opérationnels au niveau régional, qui, de nouveau, sont la traduction de cette planification et de cette programmation.
Je pense que ce que l'on cherche maintenant à faire c'est de traduire ce travail immense qui a été fait dans les réalités sur le terrain. Je me réfère clairement au niveau approprié pour exécuter sur le terrain ces plans globaux et pour les organiser en étapes successives concrètes à réaliser, en impliquant l'ensemble des acteurs. On a eu ici en Grèce des exemples extrêmement parlants, des exemples qui sont là, qui montrent bien qu’il est possible de faire tout cela. Il est vrai, qu’il existe des limites dans nos activités, dans notre créativité, à cause de règles nationales ou régionales, ou à cause des règles communautaires. Nous savons tous que parfois cela peut freiner ce qu'on fait. Mais ces règles sont là, on doit vivre avec, tout en essayant de les appliquer avec la flexibilité qui s'impose, mais dans leur respect. Donc là il n'y a pas d’échappatoire, on doit passer par là. Néanmoins, je crois qu'on a la preuve par les exemples qui sont donnés, qu'il y a moyen, même avec ces règles, même avec ces limitations, de faire de choses vraiment surprenantes, et donc ce qu'on doit maintenant essayer de faire, c'est d’essayer d'identifier quelles ont été les raisons concrètes du succès de ces activités qui ont été menées et comment on peut transposer cela dans les autres actions qu'on veut mener dans le cadre du CCA en Grèce et même en dehors du cadre du CCA. Je crois que cette discussion ici, évidemment on l'a faite essentiellement en pensant au CCA, mais il s’agit d’un concept qui va bien au delà et je pense que Monsieur Théos l'a dit très clairement dans son allocution d'ouverture. Nous vivons cette période 2000-2006 et nous essayons de mettre en oeuvre les moyens concrets pour réussir ce défi qu'on a programmé ensemble, mais il y aura la période post-2006 où, on espère justement disposer de ces outils mis en place, et je crois que c'est maintenant, pendant cette période 2000-2006 le moment de réussir ce défi pour la programmation en tant que telle, pour utiliser les moyens qui sont à notre disposition, mais surtout pour préparer le terrain et pour préparer cette façon de travailler en partenariat, en dialogue – comme cela nous a été présenté ici a plusieurs reprises aujourd’hui– et pour disposer d’une base saine pour l'avenir et pour développer les actions qui succèderont à la programmation 2000-2006. Voilà les messages les plus importants que je voulais vous communiquer.
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Ms.E.CHRISTOFILOPOULOU: We thank Ms. Verstraete for this. In concluding, I would like to say a few words about her last point, the dialogue. Indeed, if we examine the projects of the Operational Programmes and the measures of human resources and employment, we will see that planning is indeed very serious. It is quite homogeneous where it is needed, but it also offers the possibility to promote the local element. This local element can be revived through the measures that we have planned. So right now we have national and regional programmes at a crucial point, that is, the point where we need to network these Regional Operational Programmes, and the final institutional tools have now been completed. We need to have a technical dialogue between us. All this is very new for us, for the managing authorities as well, so we need to have a dialogue on the technical level. However, the basic point is that this dialogue, which has already started, when we started negotiating the CSF and the regional programmes – we need to restart this dialogue now, in a different way, so as to start to revive this initiative through these very well-planned and organised plans at the local level.
I would like to say that the minutes of this conference are on the Internet, and our address is www.ee.gr. (today: http://europa.eu.int/comm/regional_policy/country/overmap/gr/gr_en.htm) the minutes are available there, so you can download them .
56 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001
SESSION 2: “Innovation and the information society in the Regions”
Mr.R.SHOTTON: OK, ladies and gentlemen. Let’s try to start. So welcome to the graveyard session. Our first speaker is from a sparsely populated area, so he’s accustomed to this situation. And it’s Mr. Jukka Teras, and I’ll invite him to tell us about the co-operation between northern Finland and northern Sweden. Mr. Jukka Teras, please.
Mr.J.TERAS: Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Jukka Teras, and I really come from a sparsely populated area, from the northernmost part of the European Union. I thought it would be good for everybody to have a look at the map before we start. Here you see the map of Europe, not all of Europe but at least you can see the northernmost part of Europe and you can see the red sign pointing to Luleå, which is the, I would say, capital of northern Sweden, the northernmost part of Sweden, at least. And on the opposite side of Luleå there is a city called Oulu on the Finnish side, and that’s the major city on the Finnish side. And you can also see Helsinki and Stockholm; they are southern centres which dominate the economic development in Finland and in Sweden. You can also notice that Norway is close to Finland and we have a long border with Russia, too.
And now let’s get to the topic of today. Northern Finland and northern Sweden regions form the northernmost part of the European Union, and we have far less than one million inhabitants there; actually we have less than half a million inhabitants in this big region close to the Arctic circle. We have long distances, we have Arctic conditions. I can mention that we have the first snow all over Finland already, and it’s this much in the Helsinki region, too. I have done some cross-country skiing already this year, so it is Arctic even in the Helsinki region, not to mention the Arctic regions. But I think it might be one of the reasons why companies like Nokia have succeeded quite nicely in the northernmost part of the European Union, especially Finland. It’s so tough out there that people have to do something to survive, and so they invented the mobile phone.
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Back to the theme of today. Finland and Sweden are newcomers for the European Union. We joined the European Union only in 1995, so the last programme period was the first for us. So it’s something new for us, and innovative actions such as this RIS exercise was the first one in Finland and Sweden, and after discussing with representatives from the Commission we directly took the hard part and did it cross-border, Finland and Sweden together, up there. We think we have a world-class technology in the fields of information and communication technology, not only because of Nokia but because of some other technology companies. We have universities in Oulu and Luleå, but then we also have high unemployment and we have long distances, as I mentioned. Also a dominant feature is the key role of technology parks. We have been discussing already today about public/private partnerships, and I think the link between the public sector and the private sector has been the technology parks. The biggest ones are from Oulu and Luleå, but there are also technology parks in smaller cities. And that was one of the ideas behind our RIS exercise, to radiate the know-how from these bigger centres to smaller centres, and even cross-border.
Some words about the RIS northern EU working process. The project was headed by the steering committee, where we had the representatives from the private and public sector, and from Sweden and from Finland. And also we had active representation from DGXVI of that day, nowadays DG REGIO. And we have at least two people here today who were active in this project. We have Mr. Shotton, and then we have Professor Lacave from our team. The idea, first of all, was this bottom-up approach. We wanted to get ideas from the companies, from the local decision-makers. At the same time we had a top-down approach from national and EU sources, which also directed us .
In Finland people are known to do things first and then make a strategy. I think we partly did that in our exercise, but we also did a strategy plan. So I think we did parallel efforts, and I think it might be a good idea, so when you get a new project you start with a strategy plan and plan it carefully. But at the same time from day one you find some practical exercises, practical efforts, and test your strategy from the very beginning. We have followed the RIS methodology from the Commission, but I remember 1995 and 1997, when we didn’t know too much; we didn’t have any tradition from the European Union. We had advice from consultants and the Commission, but
58 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 we also had to do the pioneering work with this project. The practical work was delegated to technology parks, which played a key role, as mentioned. So the regional councils made the contracts with the Commission, but the day-to-day work was delegated to these leading technology parks. And I think that was a good thing, because then we could combine all the know-how and knowledge and, for the practical things, we had good machines from technology parks with experience from projects.
As for major results from this 18-month exercise, first of all it was the first time we could do an in-depth evaluation of the whole region of northern Finland and northern Sweden. There is a language barrier which also has to be remembered. In Finland people speak Finnish; in Sweden they speak Swedish. Only a few people speak each other’s languages. Of course we try to get on with English, and the Finnish should be good at it, but people are afraid of using foreign languages in Finland, so we had some starting problems. But I think this technical English helped us a lot from the beginning. We are quite proud of the strategy framework. I think this RIS methodology from the theoretical papers has become practice for us and has helped us even with future exercises we have called Trip and RIS plus.
I will show you now a picture of this cross-border Multipolis network, which we think is one of the major outcomes of our project. Please don’t get confused because we have used the word “Trip” there, because it was an RIS project from ’97 to ’99 which invented this cross-border Multipolis network, and we had a follow-up project called Trip which implemented it. I hope you can see that there are centres of knowledge in both countries, and the leading centres you can find are from the Oulu region that’s called Technopolis, and from the Luleå region this one, Aurorum. Oulu has a bit more than 100,000 inhabitants; Luleå has 70,000 inhabitants. We have also smaller concentrations of know-how in smaller locations, not necessarily with a university, perhaps a technical college. So they don’t have all the ingredients for a perfect technology park. But now we think that with this Multipolis network we can get them to co-operate with each other. So now we have Oulu and Luleå cooperating with these smaller centres. One could ask why. Why does Oulu need the smaller centres? And one reason might be that because of the dynamic development of the ICT sector there was a shortage of labour in Oulu in the late ‘90s and there weren’t enough good people in all of the region, so they had to co-operate with the smaller centres. And it was of
59 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 a great help to companies like Nokia to find qualified people close to the places where they operate; the people were happy, too. They didn’t have to move, and there was this stability of jobs also.
What has happened with this Multipolis project? We started with the theory, but between ’97 and ’99 we were organised in both countries and now this Multipolis organisation is living its own life. And the most important fact is that we have people attending the seminars. We have people in bilateral meetings, and people from these smaller Multipolis centres are really discussing. And it seems that in a moment we can jump away, which is a good result as such, so that now the project seems to roll on without catalysts. Now, one could ask what’s the next step? We have plans for northern Norway, because we don’t have the critical mass in northern Finland and northern Sweden. So we have to broaden the network, so that might be the next step for us.
At a national level this has been well accepted, this Multipolis idea from northern Finland and northern Sweden, and especially the national fronts in Finland have recognised that this model could work in a broader context, too. And I can tell you that last week this Multipolis concept was rewarded as the best national innovative project in 2001 in Finland, even though the idea was invented in 1999. So it took two years for the national machinery to find out that this might really work. So we are proud of this recognition from national sources.
Some words about the longer-term effects of this RIS/Northern EU exercise. We think in northern Finland and northern Sweden that this has been one of the most important tools for regional development and it is unique for cross-border regional development. It is so easy, or at least easier, to have regional development projects inside the country, but now we can co-operate across the border, too. And we have people travelling from northern Finland to northern Sweden, so we have traffic there and people moving. The Multipolis network, as I said, is recognised, but also on the practical level we have a win-win situation between the bigger centres and smaller centres. And we think this is a basis for future cross-border co-operation. We have the next project in the pipeline, it is called the NEO, Northern Enterprise Operations, where we are trying to co-operate with the EU initiative INTERREG IIIA, and we hope to get a decision for that. In that way we would get an instrument to
60 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 include even northern Norway in the picture. And you have to remember that Norway is outside the EU, so we think it will be an interesting experience as such to include Norway, from outside the EU, in the Multipolis network.
We still have unemployment in northern Finland and northern Sweden. It’s more than ten per cent. People are leaving to bigger centres, to Helsinki and Stockholm. We are not out of problems, not at all. But we think this might be one instrument that could carry on for the programme period 2000-2006. At least people have more hope and an instrument to work with. Thank you.
Mr.G.PAPAKONSTANTINOU: Thank you very much, Mr. Teras, for your presentation. Before I give the floor to the next speaker, I would like to say a few words. These are very important elements for the Greek experience as well. The first element was the element of interregional development, or international, trans-state coordination, since we have cross-border collaboration in this project. We also have similar actions in Greece, and it is very interesting to see the details of these cross-border programmes. A second interesting point is the mixture of the type of participation. This is very interesting, and I think Mr. Teras could give us more details on this participation. And the third point is financing, private and public financing. It was a catalyst, and I think now it has acquired a life of its own. Such an action acquires a certain momentum at a certain given moment, and it is very interesting to see how this momentum is acquired. These are a few thoughts that came to mind during your presentation.
Now let us go on to the next speaker, who will speak about innovation in the region of central Macedonia.
Mr.I.VASSALOS: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I will try and present innovation in the region of central Macedonia. Allow me to say a few words on innovation in general. Innovation aims at the creation of unique technology, technology with a low production cost. Innovation allows access to the market, not only now but in the future as well. We all know the factors that contribute to innovation. They are human resources, the creation of new knowledge, the transfer of knowledge, financing and new markets. We all know that there is an interface between all these factors. They do not interact in a linear way, and if we only intervene on one of these factors without taking all five into account we will not have effective action.
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Now, coming to the region of central Macedonia in northern Greece, as the previous speaker said, it is necessary for every region to have a regional approach to policies. In my opinion, it is necessary to aim at producing employment, to aim at creating new jobs. The population in central Macedonia is 1,700,000 and it accounts for 16.7 per cent of the population of the whole of the country and for 17.2 per cent of the labour force; 24.8 per cent work in the agricultural sector, 30 per cent in industry and 45.2 per cent in services. It is a region with high tourist potential, with the archaeological sites of Vergina, the Byzantine Museum in Thessaloniki, among others.
Innovation should lead to the generation of a unique product, of a unique service, which will have continuity. In central Macedonia, we have worked with RTP, RIS plus and RISI. They were co-ordinated by the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, and more specifically the URENIO group with Mr. Komninos, the professor who is in charge of the two studies. The University of Macedonia was also involved, the National Centre for Research and Technology, the professional chambers and associations, development companies and some consultants and consultant firms, and all of these implement innovation programmes nowadays. And all these agencies make up our network in Thessaloniki, in central Macedonia, so that our region can be recognised as a centre of excellence.
I couldn’t possibly mention everything that has taken place in central Macedonia in the 15 minutes of my presentation. However, I would like to give you an example of how three policies are being combined. This is an example of a project, which was supported by the region of central Macedonia, by the European Commission and by the General Secretariat for Research and Technology. At the same time, this project gave the opportunity for new investment, which was very productive – I hope that you will agree with me – and it has also created 250 jobs which seem to be permanent.
In order to start with an investment in innovation, we must have specific aims. Therefore we wanted to develop technology and transfer technology, because we can't have knowledge without the mechanisms for the transfer of technology. And finally and thirdly, support to enterprises. In our Technological Park of Thessaloniki, we have tried to create an incubator for new enterprises, and we have also tried to support actions for innovation. The
62 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 three pillars for our Technology Park in Thessaloniki are the following: research, technology transfer and enterprises. The results were that we invested EUR13 million from 1992 up until now. We have created an infrastructure of approximately 10,000 square meters, 250 jobs have been created, and the Technology Park of Thessaloniki is now recognised as a centre for development in the region of central Macedonia.
Some examples of the results of our action: The Institute of Technique in Chemical Processes has been recognised as a centre of excellence, and the same goes for the Information Technology Centre. The Technology Park in Thessaloniki, along with its management company , is implementing a lot of actions. I will not list all of these actions, because I don’t have the time. This is an innovative project, and any innovative project includes the mechanisms that transfer knowledge, and knowledge can be generated in any place around the world.
A project of this scale cannot only have a regional dimension; it must also have an international dimension, and the Technology Park in Thessaloniki is now an innovation centre linking the Greek government with initiatives by the US government. It aims at becoming an innovation centre for the whole of the Balkan region. With the RIS plus and the RISI, we have the ambition to link our initiatives with international initiatives. Our incubator for new businesses houses ten firms, mainly information technology and software companies. Our technology park is not an impressive one. You may have seen other more impressive parks. The Tagus park in Lisbon started in the same year as ours, and it now has 150 companies, 150,000 square meters and 4,500 personnel. We could not suggest that we can be compared with that scale of technology park.
How can we remedy this small delay in action? A suggestion has been, after having recognised that in Greece we have small-scale enterprises, it was suggested that we promote spin-offs, new companies, knowledge- intensive companies. We should also continue the clusters of businesses which were successful during the second CSF, and all of these actions must be included in an integrated programme. We could create virtual research institutions in the future, that is, institutions which will work through the Internet and will provide services throughout the world. We already have a BP Institute, such an institute, that is, in our technology park. It only has a
63 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 turnover of one million dollars annually, but it has only just started. We must also continue with e-learning activities and with e-partnerships, that is, partnerships with companies on the European level, and these partnerships could be very fruitful. Companies in central Macedonia could also work together with other companies throughout Europe. Our region must support its research capacity, and this goes for our technology park and for the University of Thessaloniki. More than 3,000 projects have been implemented by the University of Thessaloniki. They now have the know-how and this know-how can be disseminated through a mechanism, provided the necessary infrastructure is present.
A major problem for central Macedonia is the lack of space for new enterprises. We now have 11 companies; there are a lot of multinational companies from Germany, from the US, who would like to be located in Thessaloniki, but unfortunately we don’t have the space. We don’t have the infrastructure with high-capacity networks, and so on. However, only this would not be sufficient. A lot of agencies must work together in order to create the infrastructure for such a technology park.
Now, what will our way forward be? I think that innovation has already taken the right path. We have proposed a new project to the European Commission. There are already two more projects, and we hope that with these new projects we can promote innovation in our region. However, our strategy aims at employment. At the present moment, I believe we have the capacity to generate employment in central Macedonia. We need the support of the region, and we need access to international markets.
Our system needs to be improved, however. We already have calls for proposals, open tenders, but I think that the evaluation system must be modified. We must follow the practices followed by the General Secretariat for Research and Technology. We need assessment committees made up of individuals who may come from outside the region. Those of us involved in European Union programmes know very well that we need evaluation and monitoring. We need ex ante evaluation, a mid-term evaluation and ex post evaluation. All agencies must be involved in local development. The innovation network promoted by the region must be supported by all the agencies, and we must also mobilise the private sector. This is a major challenge.
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How do we see our future in Thessaloniki? The agencies for the development of collaboration projects, including the University of Thessaloniki, some research centres, associations such as the Confederation of Industry and so on, and mainly the private sector, must be mobilised, not only in order to develop the Technology Park of Thessaloniki. No, we need the creation of a Technopolis, which will include a network of regions, and the network of regions will encompass incubators for enterprises, for both the private and public sector. The private sector must be convinced. We need venture capital bearing a certain risk, because it is necessary for innovative investments. In this way, we will manage and develop new enterprises. We already have very encouraging results in Thessaloniki and northern Greece in general. We must assist in the setting up of new businesses. The policies that are being adopted now do not include starting new businesses. For the time being, we have the experience of working with individuals. We start with one individual, then we continue with ten individuals, and in this way we create new jobs, not only through venture capital but through some people, professionals, who need a new entity where they can work and develop.
But development of new technology is the key. This is why I suggested that we improve the research fabric. And finally, new technologies must improve the competitiveness of enterprises, and in this way they will assist the businesses in central Macedonia to acquire access not only to the Greek market but also Southeastern Europe and other places around the world.
Here you can see that in 1992 we inaugurated our technology park. It was completed in September 2000. Future actions will take place more rapidly, I am certain. Thank you very much.
Mr.G.PAPAKONSTANTINOU: Thank you very much for the presentation. A few words before I give the floor to the next speaker. An interesting subject that arises and I think we need to discuss it a bit further afterwards is this differentiation that you have shown in the number of enterprises in our incubators and the corresponding number in other countries. What are the inhibiting factors that make us have ten companies here, whereas in other countries they have more than 100? Are these inherent features of the Greek reality? Do they have to do with the institutional framework? Are they related to universities and the market? Do they have to do with more focus on many
65 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 of these infrastructures than we established in the universities? and a series of other factors. These are points to be discussed.
I will now give the floor to Mr. Orphanoudakis who will talk about the information society in the region of Crete.
Mr.S.ORPHANOUDAKIS: Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to thank the organisers of this workshop for the opportunity to present the experience and the prospects of a great effort that has been made in the region of Crete to develop the information society. It has been a large scale effort and a great effort as far as time is concerned and I hope that this expertise, this experience, will be useful to other regions, which start their efforts today or have started their efforts recently.
This effort started seven years ago approximately, in 1994, with a vision that we had then to develop the region of Crete as a model region for the information society and to become a centre for telecommunications and telematic services. Already it was an important telecommunications node in the southeastern Mediterranean. What was missing were the services. So we started planning this project, which, as we will see later on, took some years to mature. However, the effort had already started then, in very many ways that I will try to briefly present to you.
First of all, our general objective was to offer services that support the increased mobility of citizens, and which serve a variety of telecommunications demands. The objectives were complete access when needed and access to information expertise by all. And I stress this; by all, because this is something that we have to face, absolutely. And the demonstration fields for the information society had to be selected on the basis of some criteria such as: Readiness and maturity of certain objective factors and existence of knowledge, know-how and ready-made technology. We could not start, in ’94, to talk about the information society by starting a research effort. Readiness of certain subjective factors, for instance readiness of the scope of implementation and readiness of users to accept the introduction of new, advanced forms of telematic applications, and certain criteria of an economic nature: creation of new jobs, support of local economic development, etc. All this on the basis of a parallel effort to upgrade the standard of living of the citizens, something that Crete badly needs, as many
66 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 other regions do, actually. The existence of technology and know-how, and the hope that Crete was in a position to support this vision, was based on the fact that Crete in only a few years had become a research and technological evolution centre, with two universities in three different cities, technological institutes and the Foundation for Technology and Research with many Institutes, as you can see on the slide. This foundation had a very important technological basis.
So on the basis of these criteria, we selected three fields: Culture in order to develop telematic services to manage and preserve the cultural heritage, involving many, many agencies, with common actions involving Cyprus and the office of the Alexandria Patriarchate in Athens as external partners. Public administration, aiming at information for the citizens, and also organisation of the material of the region of Crete in electronic form, in order to support information for the citizens. And finally health: that was the third demonstration field for the information society. Development of telematic services, for instance tele-cardiology, development of pre-hospital emergency medical services, and a series of other health services, for instance the MIS for primary health care, the integrated system for hospitals which is constituted by many autonomous IT systems, which constitute this information system for hospitals, for secondary and tertiary health care, and the development and implementation of an integrated electronic health record that can be broadened and used beyond the regional level, at the national, European or even global level. It is the only application of such an electronic health file that exists internationally. There are also some additional value- adding services. All these services support continuous health care, which was our original objective.
So for these three sectors we developed telematic networks of cultural applications, a network for public administration which involved the region of Crete and 12 selected municipalities, and the Hygeianet, that is, the integrated telematic services network for health.
Now let me come to our experience and some general comments. First of all, as regards the infrastructure development strategy for the information society, one should go from the general level, that is, the general infrastructure for telecommunications and computer science, up to the most specific one. We have all those levels here. The comment pertains to the
67 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 bottom level, that is, the general infrastructure where our initial objective was to achieve economies of scale and scope. This is something that we have not achieved. The difficulties were quite objective, each sector has its own plans, and when one tries to develop the information society with an integrated infrastructure in order to have economies of scale, one comes upon many obstacles. And this is something that we should pay a lot of attention to in our country.
On infrastructure, it has been said that the convergence of information, telecommunications and mass media technologies, which is guided by technological development, is a process of change which relies on the conditions for application and use in order to achieve implementation and economic results. We need to have a development strategy for the regional and of course the national IT infrastructure. We need to have a strategy because increased expenditure is being made on actions for the information society. Until recently there has not been a global strategy or knowledge as to how we are going to spend this money. Today we start having such a strategy, or in some cases there is a strategy and what remains to be seen is how we are going to implement this strategy in practice. This national strategy is necessary in order to determine goals and in order to determine the National Action Plan. However, it is a strategy that needs to respond to the demands and the concerns of the users themselves in order to be successful, in order to determine the expected quality of the services and in order to become compatible with the environment of today. We need to form a framework that will ensure the collaboration between the private and public sector. The principles must be, first of all, to ensure interoperability, the use of open models and the definition of open, expandable architecture, in order to have high-quality services and in order to create the critical mass which is absolutely necessary in order to proceed with the development of the information society, as most of us dealing with the information society imagine it. And we need to have an evolution by the existing ICT, offering new capacities. We need to go from the overall network to the regional, to the national, and then to the European or even global.
It is important, as I already said, to have a collaboration between the public and the private sector, and this collaboration can ensure both the development and the acceptance and inclusion of the technologies of the information society. At the same time, this collaboration creates possibilities
68 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 for investment by the private sector itself. All the money in the information society is not enough to develop the information society. We need to have investment, and in this we need to involve the private sector. However, the private sector must think about it very seriously and must be ready to respond to the challenge. One thing is certain, that there are roles for all of us – for all, for governmental and non-governmental organisations, for telecommunications organisations, for Internet providers, computer science companies, roles for those who create electronic content and for those who provide it to others, that is, those who issue it and those who place it on the World Wide Web. And for service providers, for the manufacturers of terminals and the application designers. And of course there are roles for all users, for all of us. However, where we have roles for all, we need to clarify, to define these roles, in order to proceed to the implementation without conflict or duplication. As regards services and products, the services must meet the real or future or imaginary challenges or demands of the users. We cannot be based only on today’s needs; we must imagine what the needs and the demands of tomorrow will be, after five years, because it is on the basis of these demands that we will determine the services. These services lead to the development of new products, the products support new services, and the market is opening up, produces results and is successful.
Mr. Teras mentioned the fact that usually we start bottom-up and then we make the strategy. I think this is a very good model for what has happened in Greece, too. And this is how our effort started, as well. When we started, there was no national strategy; there were no sector business plans. This is why we developed our own strategy, in the best way we could, in the most appropriate way we could imagine. We took a risk, because this bottom-up approach quite often fails in leading to success and to the necessary review and redesigning process. In efforts such as the one in Crete we try to converge with the strategy that is being formed. Fortunately, we feel that our strategy of the past is absolutely compatible with the strategy of today; this is why we are especially happy.
Let me make a comment now, on what is going on in general, as far as the adoption of new, innovative technologies is concerned. We heard about Central Macedonia and innovation, and how fast innovation is being accepted. It is something that we are not witnessing for the first time. In all the cases of innovative technologies, there are people who immediately adopt them and go
69 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 on fast. There are others who follow, others who follow later on, and there are others who refuse to follow until something happens that will convince them. What we need for our country, since we have lost some time, is to try to create the critical mass and make the most of people who adopt technologies quite easily. As far as the region of Crete is concerned, we started trying to do that some years ago, in the ‘90s, focusing on research and development and ensuring continuity of effort. In the field of health, as you can see here, we implemented a series of projects which were complementary. We insisted on that very much, and as the years went by, research and development were transformed into pilot projects. Today, assisted by research and development, we can implement the results of this research and development effort, turning them to pilot projects, in order to see technology working. Today in Crete we have managed to create this critical mass in some sectors, and I think Mr. Teras mentioned that as well. We need to have this critical mass; we need to have it in all technological development and evolution. Critical mass needs some time to be created, but when it is there it starts growing very fast and we start to have very visible results. In the region of Crete, we have reached the point of having this critical mass. From now on, what we need is continuity, because a lot of things reach this point of the critical mass but, if we do not have continuity, then we have this curve, which I hope will not be our case.
Critical mass is created also with training. We have made an extensive effort on training in the field of health. We have trained more than 1000 doctors, nurses and administrative personnel in hospitals, in a giant effort which has taken a lot of time. However, it is quite effective, and what we want to do now is be accepted by the users. There is a network of interdependence on a more general level, interdependence between those who provide the technology, the users and the agencies/users. And this network must be coordinated; we need to have a policy, we need to have a strategy and we need to see what the relations are between all the agencies involved and how they can be regulated. Is there a healthy competition network? Is there continuity in funding? Are there mechanisms for communication between all the parties involved? I think this is something that we need to see on the regional level, that is, in each region separately. Our task, the duty of all those who want to be involved in this effort, is to develop services that are accessible to all, that are economically accessible as well, that have visible and measurable results. We need to have an overall examination and
70 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 integrated solutions, and not fragmented efforts. We need to have the understanding and active participation of the users, and these services must be compatible with the overall environment, in order for them to be easily implemented.
There are, however, some questions without an answer in each IS demonstration field. The integrated networks support the provision of telematic services in various sectors. However, in each sector when are these telematic services needed? What are the scenarios for their use? Who is involved? What is the cost? Who will pay this cost? This is something that each region must think about, because there are particularities in the regions. There are also some open issues. First of all, I am not among those who believe that the development of the information society and the provision of telematic services to all is a matter of technology. The technology exists, it will still go on evolving, developing and improving, and we have enough technology today to do many things. The problems are different. The problems, starting from the top right, are: security, certification, reliability, competition and regulatory framework issues, legal and institutional framework and procedural issues. And there are also difficulties in the continuity of implementation, problems of universal access, problems of insufficient training and education, and I am sure that in every region there are conflicting interests that we have to overcome at a certain point.
In conclusion, I will say that I believe that the development of the information society is a process of change which is an evolutionary process and not a revolutionary one. We will not transform everything and turn everything upside down. We must see this as an evolutionary process that has visible and measurable results in order to keep the effort at the desired level and it is a process of change, because its development demands organisational re-engineering. We need to have education and training, we need to have scenarios for the use of services. And certainly we must ensure an elementary quality of services, in order to be able to talk about tangible and measurable results. Thank you.
Mr.G.PAPAKONSTANTINOU: Thank you very much, Mr. Orphanoudakis. There are a lot of points to keep in mind from what you said. Two specific points, I think, could form the basis for our discussion: First of all, the economies of scale. You said that in Crete you did not manage to reach that
71 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 point of economies of scale, and I think it would be useful to talk about these points now. It would be useful to see how one could reach that point of economies of scale. Secondly, you talked about the critical mass, and the critical mass brings us to the impact of all IS actions on growth. It is difficult to measure, but I wonder whether you, in the region of Crete, have already started witnessing that. One could look at isolated cases: through your institute, the Foundation for Research, Forthnet has come into being. However, I wonder whether through the overall actions, on health for instance, whether you have seen this process stimulating the private sector come into play, since the impact of your research has been made visible.
I will give the floor to the audience for a first round of questions, but I would like to give a general framework for these three presentations. A lot of you come from the regions, and I would like to remind you of two obvious elements that will assist us in the discussion. The actions for the information society in these years 2000-2006 are funded through the Intersectoral Programme “Information Society”, and they are also funded through the Regional Operational Programmes. Each one of these Regional Operational Programmes includes an information society action. In order to co-ordinate these actions, since we have sectoral programmes and regional programmes, we have started drawing up business plans in all the regions, and this is a process that is used for all the Ministries as well. It might be of particular importance for the regions, more specifically. Now, at this stage when the business plans are being drawn up, and calls for proposals are being made, it is the right moment for sound planning, in order to avoid duplication and in order to focus on the comparative advantages of each region. And we might even achieve those economies of scale that we have not managed to reach in the past.
Now before I give the floor to the speakers of the panel, are there any questions from the audience? Any comments?
Mr.A.SAITAKIS: Artemis Saitakis from the Technology Park of Crete. I have a question for Mr. Teras on the Multipolis network. Do you have any examples of actions that have been completed involving inter-regional collaboration?
And a second question addressed to Mr. Vassalos, on the number of businesses in these incubators. You made a comparison with the Tagus park
72 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 in Lisbon. I have personal experience of the technology park in Crete. There are certain parameters that we should take into account. We should think of what might go wrong, and we don’t have many enterprises in our incubators. I think that entrepreneurship is now developing among researchers and we don’t have the institutional framework necessary that would assist the development of entrepreneurship. We don’t have implementation mechanisms such as seed capital, and the intermediate support agencies are not developed yet, because these are new institutions that have been developed during recent years.
Mr.G.PAPAKONSTANTINOU: Any other questions?
Mr.KARAMBASSIS: My name is Karambassis from the Science Park in Patras. When we talk about innovation, I think that we should clearly have in mind that we may be talking about two different things. We may have innovation, meaning that for a specific region, for a specific area, for a specific mechanism, something might be new, innovative, fresh, and this might constitute innovation. And we could also have innovation as Mr. Vassalos presented it, that is, new technology and innovation as an outcome of research and technology. So we have these two factors, these two concepts of innovation. And perhaps this is one of the reasons why we don’t have many enterprises in the technology parks, and moreover we don’t have technology parks. We don’t have enough space. We don’t have let’s say the thousands of square meters necessary for the technology parks. We need guidance, we need synergies, and the concept of synergy between entrepreneurial activity and scientific activity must be promoted. We don’t want to develop one at the expense of the other. Regional and central national guidance is necessary. When we talk about economies of scale, the problem we face is the following: given the fact that entrepreneurial activity in the field of knowledge, research and in the field of universities is not developed, if we move on to a larger scale we may finally end up with a very good business centre, but not a technology park. Caution is required not to end up with a real estate project more or less.
Mr.G.PAPAKONSTANTINOU: And now I will give the floor to Mr. Vassalos, unless you have a comment on that same point. Mr. Kolyvas.
Mr.G.KOLYVAS: Mr. Vassalos presented the regional innovation plan for the region of Central Macedonia. Mr. Papakonstantinou talked about the regional
73 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 business plans for the information society which are under way. I have a question on the other regions, beyond the region of central Macedonia. Do you have such regional business plans on innovation? And if you have not drawn them up, or if you have not thought of drawing them up, isn’t it time now for such business plans to be drawn up?
Mr.G.PAPAKONSTANTINOU: I am afraid I cannot answer this question. Maybe some representatives from the regions would like to take the floor. Mr. Vassalos.
Mr.I.VASSALOS: Thank you, Chairman. Very briefly, because my colleagues from the other two parks have given the answers, I think. Technology parks have not developed in Greece in the same way as the Boecillo in Spain, of two million square meters, or the park that was mentioned in Portugal. We started on an initiative of the Institute for Research and Technology, and we started with the technology parks in Thessaloniki, Patras and Iraklion in Crete. The reasons why these knowledge-intensive companies and technology parks have not developed are well known in Greece. We have received applications from Australia, from Germany, from Connecticut, but we don’t have the space. As the representative from the technology park of Patras said, we don’t have planning possibilities, we don’t have enough space, we cannot enlarge our technology parks. And this goes beyond our competencies. The universities and the private sector could be involved. In Thessaloniki, with the Technopolis, there is a prospect for information society, and we support this initiative. We are looking for areas in the surrounding regions, near Thessaloniki. This is an initiative supported by all agencies, and we hope that something big enough will be created so that new companies will come and be installed there and new companies will be created.
Mr.G.PAPAKONSTANTINOU: Thank you very much. Mr. Teras.
Mr.J.TERAS: Yes, if I first try to answer the three questions of the Chairman, the first thing was the budget of our RIS northern EU exercise, and that was EUR500,000. It was an 18 month project but there was an extension of six months, so it became a two-year project. And the funding was divided between the European Union 50%, and the region 50%, out of which we got 25% from Finland and 25% from Sweden. And the regional councils took care of this national funding.
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The second question was about the details of participation. Just a brief comment: we had a group of industrial leaders from these ICT sectors who were actively participating in our work, in strategy formulation and branch- specific issues. I think this combined with, in a positive way, bureaucratic work, was a good mix. We had also pilot projects, kind of feasibility studies, funded by the RIS exercise, to produce new cross-border ideas. And when we thought the projects would fly, then they were on their own and the two companies from two countries sought their own funding for the future.
Then the last comment was about the dynamics of this RIS northern EU exercise. I think there was company-specific co-operation, technology park-specific co-operation and international networking through the science parks but also through the RIS international network where we actively participated. Why do we think this successful co-operation will continue? We think that there is some added value, as long as we have the courage and we earn our success, so that we have people in technology parks answering questions from the region. So you must have this active secretariat in both countries in order to succeed.
One short comment: The national contribution was EUR250,000, so I think it’s quite a nice price for the national sources to contribute in order to continue this Multipolis network.
I’d like to use this opportunity to comment also on Professor Vassalos’s comment on why we don’t have enough incubator companies. In our experience in Finland we think that getting from zero to ten per cent is the hard part, to raise those companies. And that’s why there are so many incubators that have troubles. But if you succeed in getting to this ten per cent or more companies, then it doesn’t become easy but it becomes a bit easier. So I think you could try to be selective. I know it’s hard when you have an incubator – you should take everybody in.
Mr.G.PAPAKONSTANTINOU: Thank you very much. Mr. Orphanoudakis.
Mr.S.ORPHANOUDAKIS: I would like to add something. Maybe this is of interest to Thessaloniki, but it also concerns Patras and it certainly concerns Iraklio. We don’t only need space. It is not a question of thousands of square
75 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 meters. I think what we do not have, what we lack, is the infrastructure, and we also lack the personnel for the enterprises. We don’t have the theatre infrastructure, the school infrastructure, the education infrastructure. And if we do not focus on infrastructure, we will lose the existing personnel in our institutes. Thank you.
Mr.G.PAPAKONSTANTINOU: I think this could be called eligible expenses. Mr. Shotton.
Mr.R.SHOTTON: Mr. Chairman, I’d just like to stress the interesting difference of view between those who feel that EUR500,000 is a lot of money and those who feel that it’s nothing.
Mr.G.PAPAKONSTANTINOU: Any other comments from the audience? I think we still have some time for questions or comments. It would be interesting to hear what the representatives of the regions have to say on the comment of Mr. Kolyvas on broader business plans or innovation in the regions. Ms. Zembiliadou.
Mr.G.ZEMBILIADOU: The RIS programmes were recently completed in the regions, and the results of this programme constitute a business plan for the sector of innovation in our region – yes, the region of Western Macedonia is my region. Due to collaboration projects between local agencies, research institutes, the region and all the stakeholders in innovation, we have these business plans, and proposals coming out of this programme. They have now come as applications for projects to be included in the Regional Operational Programme in Western Macedonia.
Mr.G.PAPAKONSTANTINOU: Ms. Tsaliki.
Ms. J.TSALIKI: I am not talking as a representative of a region but as an ex- project manager for RIS and RISI for Thessaly. I can give you some data on the region of Thessaly. Through the fourth Research and Technology Framework and through Article 10 of the ERDF, programmes have been financed for innovation in the following regions: Thessaly, Crete, Central Greece, Central Macedonia, Northern Aegean, Western Macedonia, Eastern Macedonia, Thrace and Epirus. And I think these have already been completed. Attica, Western Greece, Peloponnese and the Southern Aegean
76 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 are the only regions which do not have a business plan on innovation, unless there are more recent data I am not aware of. Thank you.
Mr.G.PAPAKONSTANTINOU: Professor Lacave, please.
PROF.M.LACAVE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just a comment about what has been said about technological parks, lack of space, square meters, infrastructure, etc. Since I have some experience in Portugal, for instance, I think that there are some other ways to tackle, to cope with the problem. The first one is probably to upgrade the level of industrial zones or classical industrial parks, and technological parks providing services to the companies located in the industrial areas. I think this is a proper strategy dealing with the problem of infrastructures, upgrading the level of infrastructures and delivering services to companies. Thank you.
Mr.G.PAPAKONSTANTINOU: I think there is still time for a couple of questions. I think we can close this session by stating the obvious, that is that, on the regional level, innovation actions and information society actions which are not identical concepts, are the most difficult actions from the point of view of planning and from the point of view of monitoring and implementation. On the regional level these actions may sometimes be turned into more traditional actions.
We have now heard examples from many regions from the whole of Europe and from regions in our country as well, and this has shown that we have multiple results not only in the immediate surrounding but more widely as well. Adequate planning is very important, for precisely all these reasons. Planning through the Regional Operational Programme for various sectors in information technology, employment and so on.
We will now continue with the next session on the topic of Integrated Actions for the Development of Urban and Mountainous Regions.
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SESSION 3:
INTEGRATED ACTIONS FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF URBAN AND MOUNTAINOUS REGIONS
Mr.D.PSALTOPOULOS: Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to welcome you to the third session of this workshop, on Integrated Actions for the Development of Urban and Mountainous Regions. It is a very, very timely topic, a very actual one, and a very crucial one, because the developmental approach, which is based not only on a sector rationale but which also gives great importance to space is something which gains more and more ground. We have the opportunity in our country, in the framework of the collaboration that we have had with the European Commission and also with the invaluable support and initiative of the Ministry of National Economy, to face the future with optimism, since we have integrated several actions of this approach in the programmes of the third programming period.
I would like to present to you briefly our speakers, who will try to analyse useful experience from rural areas and from urban areas. We have two plus two, from what I see on the agenda. We will start with the presentation of best practice and experience from the mountain area of the Piemonte region in Italy. This will be presented by Ms. Elena di Bella, who is an expert in the Agricultural Directorate in Torino. The best practice and experience from an urban development action in England will follow. Mr. Peter Ramsden will be the speaker, who is an expert in the New Economic Foundation in London. Then we will have the experience from Greece, and will have two interesting presentations, first by Ms. Asimakopoulou , Director of the Egnatia Foundation in Epirus, and by Ms. Lazari from the Development Company of the Municipality of Patras. I also come from Patras, from the university of Patras, but I would like to assure you that the presence here of two representatives from Patras was not intentional.
Let us start with Ms. di Bella. Piemonte is a geographical area which has one of the highest per capita incomes in Europe, if not the highest, which means that we can learn a lot from their experience and the practices that they use there. I give the floor to Ms. di Bella. Thank you.
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Ms.E.DI BELLA: I work for the Torino Province. You know in Italy we have four levels of planning. The first level is the government, the second is the region, the third is the province and the fourth is the municipality.
I must say, to begin with, that in the rural and agricultural sector the role of the regions and provinces is very, very important. We can say that in agricultural and rural development the role of national government does not exist in the sense that the planning, the policy and also the funds come mainly from the regions and from the provinces. Since 1972, the national government in Italy has decentralised all the agricultural competencies and rural development competencies to regions, and recently, with the law called Bassanini in 1998, a part of these competencies passed from regions to provinces. We don’t have the same framework in employment policies, as most member states in Europe, where the competencies are national competencies. In Italy, the competencies are regional and at the county and provincial level. This is very important, because we can really plan our development at the local level, because the law gives us this opportunity. It is something very, very important.
I will only give a little data about mountain areas in Italy, only to show that in Italy the surface of mountain areas is 54 per cent. This is important as it is in Spain and in Greece. In France, for example, the mountain area is no more than around 20-30 per cent. In Italy, the mountain area is very important in terms of inhabitants and in terms of agricultural area. This is a map showing my region, the Piemonte region, and in this map you can see how we organised, at institutional level, the development of mountain areas. These 46 areas – you can see the numbers – are what we call comunità montane. These are groups of communes, and each of them, each comunità montana, has at least 10 or 15 different communes per valley. For example, we have the Comunità Montana Val Pellice. It is one valley in our region, and ten different communes belong to this Comunità Montana in the same valley. They share the same geographical situation, cultural situation, with the same identity and with the same point of view. This is very important.
These are the five levels of planning we have in mountain areas: Nation, but of very low importance for mountain areas, region, province, comunità montana, the group of communes, and commune. With the comunità montana, we can plan at a different level than the municipality, so
79 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 we have an institutional level that is very efficient, because it is working and planning at a real local level, at a level that is taking into consideration the cultural difference and the cultural identity of a valley. That is very important for a mountain area.
I tried here to show how local communities, comunità montane, communes, territorial pacts – I will talk about these later – and counties and provinces are planning their development in rural areas, in mountain areas. We have different collectivities dealing with different financial tools, but not only financial tools, with different tools of planning. We have, at the top – and I put them at the top because this is the hierarchy – the rural development plan that is very important for rural development, planning horizontal, transversal actions. But regional planning must be taken into account; if the region planned similar actions in rural areas, the local community must accept it, and they cannot negotiate it. And even provinces that had competencies in agricultural policies were not allowed to negotiate this rural development plan with the region although this plan is one of the most important tools for planning our future, to 2006 at least. This is an issue that must remain at the top.
Also territorial pacts at a financial level have been very important instruments. Because in the territory of the Province of Torino we have six territorial pacts, we have six groups of people, private and public, that are now really a sort of laboratory for decisions, for planning and for the utilisation of different financial resources. They are really working in a bottom- up way, using a partnership method. For agriculture, territorial pacts don’t provide much finance. So far, we don’t have any money from territorial pacts for agriculture, and the problem is that territorial pacts are the tools to negotiate, to decide, to give to local people the tools to plan their future, but so far there is no possibility of financing what they decide.
You have on the right side of the screen INTERREG III A, the cross- border INTERREG, and the LEADER PLUS programme, that are real instruments, real tools, for local communities to plan their future. I put them on the same level as local community, and the two arrows picture the interactive relationship, because this is a level where local communities can really negotiate their future with regions and with cross-border realities.
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Unfortunately they are instruments that are not so strong financially, but they are instruments that offer local communities a real possibility to plan .
On the left side, you have the plans that our province in particular decided on a pluriannual basis – I mean from this year to 2004. We have planned three different strategies in agriculture, one for organic farming, one for valorisation and promotion of wine production, and one for the promotion of food and quality agricultural products. They are the three big strategic projects that we will finance with own funds, as a province, not national funds, not regional funds but the province’s funds and that will support some actions in the local communities.
You will see the role of INTERREG III B and III C that offers opportunity to local communities to implement some actions and some strategies, because the INTERREG III B and III C are not really financial, punctual and structural actions, but are, above all, strategic, transnational, transregional actions. But they can be an instrument for local communities to plan for the future. After 2006, for our rural and agricultural world, this will be a big challenge. The EQUAL programme for employment could also contribute.
Now I want to present one of the two projects we are financing in the framework of the strategic plans for our province. This is an example of a project. The name of the project is A Trademark for Sarass del fen. Sarass del fen is the name of a cheese in a dialect of Piemonte. It is the name of a typical cheese we produce in the Vaudois Valley, in the Val Pellice Valley, where some typical foods and some typical agricultural products have been saved. This little project is part of a bigger project, a project called Creation of Valorisation of Typical Food and Agricultural Quality Products. Our idea is to create different trademarks for different typical agricultural and food products, a market label or a European label. The idea is to promote local milk and typical agricultural products. We will improve the technology, because, as you know, these kinds of products produced in mountain areas by farmers are not always constant, are not always at a good technological level. We need to improve the quality. We need also to have a trademark, at least a market trademark, a commercial trademark. And we also need to set up communication activities, to get people to know about these products, because you know Turin is very, very close to this valley but only a few
81 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 citizens know about these typical products. So we need a big communication plan.
This is the area. You can see at the right side Torino, and on the left side you can see the valley where this cheese is produced. The final objective, our objective for the agricultural sector, is to raise the income of farmers in mountain areas and also to raise the number of farmers living there, to stop people leaving and give new opportunities to farms and new opportunities to young farmers. The other objective is to qualify and identify the mountain agricultural products, to give the farmers a sense of their cultural identity. That is very, very important for them, and that is maybe the reason this product has been successful, because we have found something that is in the heart of farmers.
The project has begun and will last until 2004 . The partners are two comunità montane, two groups of communes from two different valleys, 20 communes, 20 municipalities and 18 farmers who are the producers of this cheese. They are little farmers and they are very few in number. And our province, the Province of Torino is also a partner. We don’t use here any European or national funds. The sponsors are the comunità montane, the Province of Torino, and maybe Piemonte region, with its own fund for research. Because our region has its fund for research and experimentation activities we will use this fund. We will not use national or European funds. The results will be to get a standard of production, to get a mark, to get maybe a European label, and to improve communication about the identity of this product. This is the result that we hope to achieve.
Possible causes of failure – we don’t expect to fail. The cause of success in this case is that the cheese exists, it is a reality, it is not invented, as many “typical” products are. The advantage of technical and training activities is perceived by farmers. Farmers can immediately see the importance of the product, because it is a project working with their own production, with the production that is traditional for them, that is a part of their culture, of their deep culture and their deep history. Also there is an advantage in terms of price, because this product has already been commercialised with this name, with the help of an association called in Italy Slowfood – maybe you don’t know it, maybe you do know it. By working with this association, Slowfood, and in the framework of this new culture, a product
82 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 that was previously not important, that consumers didn’t know about, is now a real fashion and has produced some really concrete economic results for a remote mountain area. The price doubled in a few months. This is something that a farmer or an economic operator can immediately understand, and you can immediately move people when the price is rising. The second aspect is that when you introduce a trademark you defend a product. Then you make an action that from a psychological point of view defends the identity, the diversity. This is something the population in mountain areas feel strongly. They want to defend their identity, their diversity from the city, from the other people, from the other valley; they are different from the valley two kilometres away. Then this is something real that is in the culture of people from mountain areas. This then, is the reason for creating a trademark because for them it is something that is very important, and they want to work on it. And the objective is very close and very concrete to them. In the short term it is very important, too.
The challenge is to transfer those elements to other areas in Italy, in our region, in Europe. Can it be done? Maybe yes, maybe no. It depends on the network and on the organisation of institutions. We have comunità montane who, in this case, are helping us to plan with the territory and with the local people. This is very important to us. In other countries this level does not exist. So maybe some elements that work very well for us are not transferable to others. We hope that the young people will continue the traditions and the work of their parents in mountain areas, thanks to this cheese.
I will conclude with one consideration, and I am very glad to be here with the European Commission. There are two problems in mountain areas that concern us. Firstly, a real European policy for mountain areas doesn’t exist – maybe you know. The European Community, the European Union, include mountain policy under the umbrella of policies for less-favoured areas. They say the European mountain does not exist, so mountain areas are included in a policy for less-favoured areas, for rural areas. The second aspect is state-aid policy, because on one side we have the possibility to use money from governments, or regions or provinces to help local development with our own funds, without using European funds that you cannot always use because it is not enough. We don’t have enough, because of the time, the procedures, the difficulty of planning, the negotiation, etc. We have in certain
83 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 situations the possibility to use our funds autonomously, as provinces, as regions, but there is the policy of state aid. The European Commission, the European Union give us precise rules and regulations to respect – and someone said this morning that we have to respect them. So we cannot go beyond a certain percentage of co-financing. We cannot finance certain actions, for example the creation of points of trade, or certain actions to help with the valorisation of products. So the difficulty for us working in mountain areas is to keep this equilibrium, this balance between the freedom, the fact that we also have to use our local resources and the fact that the European Union gives us precise rules which means we cannot offer more than a certain level of help. This is very difficult in mountain areas, and we must deal with the risk of the abandonment of those areas. What we need is more freedom at national and regional and local level or to have, finally, a European policy specifically for mountain areas.
Mr.D.PSALTOPOULOS: Thank you very much, Ms. di Bella. Before giving the floor to the next speaker, I would like to make a couple of comments. The first point I think is well known to all of you. There is a decentralising atmosphere in Italy in general, with many differences at the various levels. The fact that there is a possibility for planning and implementation at the level of mountainous communities is a fact that might be relevant to specific countries and not relevant to some other countries. There is decentralisation to an important extent for important issues, and through a partnership in the example that was presented, we saw that quality is promoted, trademarks are developed, and so on. For some of us in the room, it might be interesting to note that some projects do not require financing from the European Community or from national resources. This is an interesting point for the discussion.
And now I will give the floor to Mr. Peter Ramsden, an expert from the New Economics Foundation, one of the most important think tanks in the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom has a series of such institutions involved in developmental activities.
Mr.P.RAMSDEN: Although I seem to have made my name in cities and particularly deprived areas of cities, I actually came to this meeting from a mountain area quite close to where Elena is working but on the French side of
84 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 the border. And I can say that we need as many projects like that as we can get. Also next year is the International Year of Mountains, and although Europe has not done very much to publicise this it offers an opportunity for mountain regions to really network together. This is a UN thing for the whole world, but we do have a lot of mountains in Europe and it will be good to see a really strong economic view of mountain areas, actually looking at the economics of mountain areas. And perhaps that’s a challenge to the Commission to finance something in that department.
I want to talk about economic inclusion, which is a concept we’ve been developing for all types of areas in the East Midlands of the UK, which is a region, just for reference, which takes in Derby, Nottingham and Leicester, three cities that you might have heard of. But I also want to try and draw some conclusions which are more general than just for the East Midlands, because we think, with some changes, that this is an approach that has legs; it’s an approach that could travel to other places and other regions.
Just in very brief terms, we have some very interesting bullet points here. NEF, New Economics Foundation is a think tank, which means we’re independent of government but we provide policy advice, lobbying, and also we do project work and consultancy. That’s the end of the publicity, but the New Economics web site has many publications at the bottom, on the web site.
We know what exclusion is. It reduces competitiveness. If we have people not participating in the economy, they can't do things, they can't make a contribution to the economy. It damages the images of our region. This year in the UK, three of our regions had major riots. People were out on the street burning cars, throwing things at the police. Who wants to invest in a region that has riots that seem to happen all the time? It obviously reduces everybody’s quality of life. Especially in cities but also in other areas, crime and the other things that attach to exclusion are just bringing the whole area down. And that reduces sustainable growth and sustainable development.
Just to paraphrase what Clinton said: It’s the economy, stupid! That was what the Clinton campaign ran on in I think 1992. And perhaps the follow- up should be, for us as people involved in local development, it should be enterprise, enterprise, enterprise. We haven’t heard very much about
85 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 enterprise today, but unless we can transform the economic base of our regions we aren’t getting anywhere. And enterprises are what basically create jobs and make that possible. And the public sector is conceited if it believes that it by itself changes the world. It’s a conceit which we have to grow out of. Most of us are in some way attached to the public sector. We have to recognise that engagement of the private sector, the private sector, is the absolute priority. Otherwise our strategies for development will fail.
But of course growth by itself doesn’t necessarily reduce exclusion. We’ve had growth in the UK, you’ve had it here. In the UK, we are now in the top two European countries, member states, for disparities between rich and poor. As our growth has developed, those disparities have grown. So we have to do something else. Also exclusion is much more pervasive than statistics show. In the UK we have an unemployment level of, on average, four per cent. But the real level of unemployment is more than double that because of invalidity, sickness or other forms of hidden unemployment. And remember that most new jobs, everywhere – this isn’t just in Europe; it’s everywhere – are created by small and medium-sized enterprises and particularly by micro- enterprises, so we have to nourish them. And don’t forget Hewlett Packard. Two people, one garage, near Stanford University, and they created the whole of that corporation. So what I am arguing is that the success of our work at the regional level is measured by the impact on local economies and specifically on enterprises. What happens to our enterprises? So how can we grow and include at the same time? That’s the crucial question that we have to face and answer every day of our working lives.
We’ve been working with this regional development agency which is called the East Midlands Development Agency, and they had this idea of economic inclusion. They said, well, we’ve had this idea. Can you put some clothes on it? So we started dressing it up. First of all we had to find a definition. What is economic exclusion, as distinct from social exclusion? And we wanted to focus on the exclusion from mainstream economic life. What we then say is that economic inclusion offers us a range of regional development tools that can help to reverse that process. We think we have both individuals and communities that are economically excluded, and I’ll talk a little bit about both. The tools include investments, skills, innovations, enterprises I’ve mentioned, and an old one, community economic development.
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What’s been happening in the past? Again this is a UK-specific example, but it has some generic tendencies. First of all, local development – and this is true across Europe – had become detached from the mainstream of regional policy. It was something set apart. It was a few crumbs from the table, which we were grateful for, of course, but it wasn’t the cake. It was just a few crumbs from the cake. The real cake was going on major infrastructure and so on. Secondly, that infrastructure work, unless very carefully implemented, often fails to impact sensitively on local communities. And we’ll talk a little bit about how you can be more sensitive about that implementation. And particularly you can be close to big infrastructure and a lot of expenditure, and your community may still be very poor. London Docklands, with Canary Wharf, three massive towers in the middle of the East End of London is a very telling example of that sort of trend. I hope that Athens airport won't be the same. So in policy terms we were drawing very much on the territorial pacts, which we supervised in a previous life, on the Objective I and II programmes themselves, and on the European Employment Strategy, which has obviously been refined over the last two years.
At the UK level, the UK has become a sort of world capital for inclusion policy. We’ve had more committees on inclusion that most people have. And you get some example with 18 policy action teams, for example, all working on exclusion. We have a national strategy for neighbourhood renewal. And then a new set of agencies were brought into being, with an economic focus, only two or two and a half years ago. They adopted their strategies in April 2000. And just to give you a flavour, people always think their own country is the worst, OK? So here, because you're in Greece, you think well, you know, it doesn’t work because we’re in Greece. Well, in Britain we have organisational chaos. Apart from the devolution that was mentioned earlier, every single Ministry is constantly changing its name. We had DETR; now it’s DTLR. When you ring up directory enquiries for a phone number, they don’t have any phone numbers for government. You literally can't get them. We have a thing called the Small Business Service, which is supposed to help small businesses across the place. I rang up; I asked “Can I have the phone number of the Small Business Service?” I didn’t do this to protest: I needed the number. No one knew the number. I finally had to do five hops through departments to get it. So that’s at the national level.
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At the regional level we have an emerging devolved structure, but so far very few parts of it are accountable in any form or way. Only the elected regional chambers are accountable. They are not directly elected, and they don’t have any power. The other two are appointed and are, in a sense, what we call quangos, which means quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisations. And then at the local level we have all the usual confusion of public sector, private sector, bits and pieces, and again all changing quite fast. These local strategic partnerships are brand new; Learning and Skill Councils are brand new.
So just to illustrate one other thing, although I’m talking mostly about cities: we have tried to devise a regional strategy that applies across a whole range of different types of space. So we have cities, but we also have mining communities, which are in rural areas, we have coastal towns, and we have remote rural areas, including a national park, which isn’t as high or as wild as some of the places being talked about here, but is still problematic in terms of sparse population, depopulation and so on. What we have tried to do with this agency, the East Midlands Development Agency, is to say “Economic inclusion is part of your core activity. Not a crumb off the table, it’s something you do every day, with your mainstream programme, and that includes your mainstream regional development programme. They actually only have Objective II and that only covers part of the region. These are their five priorities: climate for investment which is about mostly inward investment; skills and learning; priority for enterprise and innovation, combined with the information and communications technology revolution, which is attempting to capture the “dot.com” phenomenon; and sustainable communities.
But in working through the strategy, what we decided with them was that this needed some zing. It needed something to set it on fire. So we created three catalysts with them, which were intended to help achieve some easy quick hits, because you need to have results. Even politicians can't wait forever, for results apparently, so they need something that might show within a year or two years. So we focused on three approaches: Enterprise Communities, micro and social enterprise and community finance. Enterprise Communities really borrow a lot from the Territorial Employment Pacts, but instead of just focusing on employment it focuses much more on enterprise. So it tries to keep the two in balance, in harmony together, which could be a challenge to DG REGIO and DG Employment. It focuses on analysis, on
88 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 identifying potential, on helping communities to produce visions and strategies and a whole set of techniques which we’ve developed, a toolkit effectively, around planning your local economy and engaging with it, in very ordinary language, and then encouraging new and what we call diverse enterprises. So not always the simple model of the corporate, but looking at cooperative structures, at social enterprises as well as micro and more traditional forms.
And then what are the sort of things we do? Well, just one example: combined access centres, but there are many other sorts of things that we are doing around that. So an Enterprise Community is essentially a planning module which helps the community to get itself organised, very similar to some of the sorts of things that Elena was talking about in the context of LEADER PLUS, for example. And we’ve been borrowing heavily from some of the work by Michael Porter, who is the Harvard competitiveness guru. One of the things we have wanted to focus on is that really, if you’re going to get an enterprising community you have to have a market. Not necessarily in the community; it might be beyond, just as the cheese from Piemonte might well sell well beyond the Piemonte region itself and that will push up the price.
So markets, but also support services, which is where the public sector might come in, as well as the local environment – how can you change that? And the community’s own capacity and resources, and in particular entrepreneurship. How do you encourage people to become entrepreneurs? How can you make it feel like a natural thing to do, rather than taking the safe option of, say, the public sector?
The second of our catalysts was supporting micro and social enterprises. Again, most of our enterprises – something like 90 per cent – are in the category “micro”, employing less than 10 people. So we’ve created a module, again, which can reach right down into the smallest level of enterprise. And before we did this, there was a widespread view that it wasn’t worth helping enterprises of less than 10 people because there were too many of them. Which meant that you could never help a potential Hewlett Packard, until it employed 10 people. And again, as someone said earlier, once they do employ 10 people they don’t really need your help. It’s when they’re getting there that they need your help. And of course micro-enterprise, and self-employment itself, has a major potential for helping people create an income for themselves. But again, exploring new markets, looking at the types
89 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 of sectors that the Commission itself has identified as being the potential sectors for action.
And finance: Finance turns out to be the biggest barrier that these businesses face. Very often small amounts, and so new ways of dealing with that, must be created .
Just to illustrate one way that we’ve been working a bit outside the loop: it was widely thought in the UK that inner cities, which are the areas where these riots take place and were no-go areas, had no hope, that you would never want to invest in them, that they were not worth doing anything in. And we’ve taken a specific action, which is called the Inner City 100, which uses the Financial Times and all its power as a voice of the corporate world, really, rather than just Britain, to show that you can have a successful business in a less-favoured area, and these areas are very, very unfavoured indeed. And what we have done is we have produced the first list this year on November 27th. A star-studded sort of cast – big profile. And we’re beginning to win the argument that there is and can be entrepreneurial success in these types of areas, but it needs to be backed. And it’s this type of transformation which is needed to help perceptions change. I have only one copy with me, but we will put a .pdf up so that people can see the type of way that we are working. We had really high-profile success, including our own Chancellor, Gordon Brown, who spoke at the meeting where it was launched.
So just coming back to enterprise, the key factors for success that we identified: market linkages, access to resources, networking which was mentioned by Elena earlier, and of course entrepreneurship. So unless we can act on all four of those bases we aren’t going to transform the entrepreneurial culture, especially in the poorest areas.
So this is the third of the three catalysts. I said that finance was most important. What had been happening in the UK was that banks had decided that smaller business were too expensive to manage. They really want to have accounts which have more than EUR1.5 million of turnover in them per year. And so they were not only closing branches in small communities, but they were also avoiding accounts which were very small themselves. So what we’ve been doing over a number of years has been to say well, there is an alternative. We’ve been helping – almost using a sort of homeopathic analogy,
90 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 none of our schemes added up together probably made more than 5,000 loans a year. But their very existence challenges the banks to say what are you doing for this same community? We’ve made it bankable. Why can't you? And as a result of this, again with government support, there has been a sea of change in the attitude of the banks towards banking small and micro- business. And this type of thing, again, it’s not part of the mainstream public sector, but the public sector can have an influence, both through regulation and also through leadership and through clever techniques like this.
We’ve also designed a tax credit to work specifically in the least favoured areas, so that if you invest in an inner city or a remote rural area you effectively pay no tax on your investment. That means that you get an extra five per cent of return effectively. So if the rate of return would have been 10 per cent, you would now get 15 per cent. That makes it comparable with investing in a much more easy area to invest in. So we’ve been planning with financial instruments at a very high level. Now, since Harry Potter, we’re beginning to call it “financial wizardry”. But we think that we’re on to something with this.
There are some other examples which I won't spend any time on, except to say that micro-credit, which is a concept developed in the South – places like Bangladesh with the Grameen Bank, micro-credit is now arriving in Europe and is being practised extensively with excluded groups. Western Europe’s largest project, ADI, is now lending to 3-4000 people a year to start up their own business. And in Poland, one of the accession countries, Fundus Micro is lending something like 20,000 loans a year, but at an average of less than $500, or EUR500 roughly, if the euro is creeping up against the dollar. So you can create business through very small amounts of money.
So just some final messages. This idea of economic inclusion has legs: it will travel. It’s part of what our core business should be in regional development. It should also be part of what the private sector does, because it’s actually easy for them to incorporate it, and it’s good business. They can increase their markets. It connects the three pillars of sustainable development, which are environment, economy and society, in a meaningful way. It connects top-down with bottom-up, again using all the partnership architecture that you’ve seen in other examples. And most importantly, it’s the
91 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 crucial link between competitiveness and inclusion. So I offer you economic inclusion. Thank you.
Mr.D.PSALTOPOULOS: Thank you, Mr. Ramsden. It was indeed a very interesting presentation. There were two or three things that one could identify with: First of all, we have areas with similar problems, maybe not so acute as the ones that you are dealing with in the UK, but social exclusion indeed creates a lot of problems. And maybe it would be worthwhile to discuss how things could evolve in the future, at least for our country, and what kinds of areas would be touched by social exclusion, if we are unlucky enough to have this. A very important issue is the promotion and the creation of SMEs – we know that they create jobs. How vulnerable they are after their establishment and why is another issue which needs investigation. Finally, the three distinctive but complementary kinds of intervention are a very important topic, because this example shows how we can promote the development of these areas. Access to resources, the existence of networking, etc. are issues that we need to see how they can be introduced, to what extent, by whom, and since we are talking about entrepreneurship I think we could examine what factors can have an impact on it.
Let us keep that for the discussion. Now I will give the floor to Ms. Asimakopoulou, Director of the Egnatia Foundation in Ioannina, who will talk about the experience of the Egnatia Foundation in the mountainous region of Epirus.
Ms.A.ASIMAKOPOULOU: Thank you, Chairman. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I would like to thank the organisers who invited us today, who gave me the opportunity to very briefly present the methodology used very successfully by the Egnatia Epirus Foundation in order to implement regional development projects in Epirus. The perspective of my presentation is the private sector and, more specifically, non-governmental organisations.
Now let me turn to the Egnatia Foundation, which is a legal entity in the private sector. It was founded in 1991. Its headquarters are at Ioannina. It has offices in Greece and a conference centre in Ioannina. Mr. Giannis Averof is the President. The Vice President is Mr. Dimitrios Glaros, Chancellor of the University of Ioannina. In the last ten years the Foundation has participated in
92 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 projects which are funded by the European Union. Today it employs around 65 people.
Now a few words about Epirus for our foreign guests. It lies in northwestern Greece, it borders with Albania, the Ionian Sea is on the west. The population, according to the last census, is around 350,000 people. Unlike the Piemonte region, unfortunately, the development indicators position Epirus as one of the poorest regions. The per capita income is around EUR10,000, the unemployment rate around 11 per cent. In general it is a mountainous region, especially remote and isolated, with lack of infrastructure. However, the good thing is that there are excellent prospects for development.
Before entering into the details of the methodology that we are using to implement various projects, and in order for us to understand the vision that starts with this slide here, I would like to tell you about the Foundation. The Foundation is one of the three Averof brother Foundations. The other two have contributed a lot at the regional level in Epirus and Metsovo. The Egnatia Foundation is the contemporary foundation, if you wish. It introduces an innovative feature. The name is taken from the great Egnatia Road project. We understand that we cannot contribute to the development of the necessary infrastructure for the modernisation of Epirus; therefore we are trying to be a notional Egnatia Road that will link Epirus to the rest of the world and will help in its modernisation on the basis of modern European models.
So you see that our main goal is sustainable development. Very briefly, I will say a few words about the tools that we use, the actions that we implement, how we evaluate our results, and of course certain findings which are useful on the basis of our experience so far. Talking about development and modernisation, we should mention priorities, which are set up by government and non-governmental organisations. They are: development of infrastructure, increasing employment, upgrading of services in the private and the public sector, and certainly the preservation of the very good standard of living that we have in Epirus. The disadvantages and drawbacks are that we have a lot of distance to cover before we reach our goals. The pros are that in Epirus there is a very well-preserved man made and natural environment. The social fabric makes its presence felt, and we have very, very lively traditions which can constitute a basis for achieving the valorisation
93 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 and enhancement of our competitive edges to develop socially and economically on a sustainable basis.
So the objective of our foundation is to support innovative actions and activities compatible with tradition and the environment. This support can take the form of financing, elaboration of programmes on the co-ordination or the participation level, and certainly information, promotion and publicity actions. We try to introduce innovation at the level of ideas, concepts, the methodology that will be used for their implementation, or at the level of the implementation, application or introduction of new technologies. The only conditions are compatibility with the environment and tradition. This offers us a great scope for activity, and very few limitations, we use human resources within and outside Epirus, know-how and IT technologies, always in the objective of acting as a catalyst for development activities, always with a view to implementing the various actions on a pilot level, and to having products and services produced which are useful for Epirus. The main axes for our activities are, on the horizontal level, tourism, culture and environment, and on the vertical level in all actions a great role is played by the introduction of new information technologies.
A few words about what we have done so far. The first project was the conference centre at Metsovo, the Diaselo, a modern and model conference centre. Right now it is a very successful enterprise, which is an important resource for the funding of other activities.
The portal that we have built on the Internet, the Epirus Connection, is an electronic gate to the World Wide Web which seeks to connect the expatriates of Epirus. It employs 12 people on a permanent basis, and six external collaborators. In the past we also had some similar activities. We started with the creation of business data bases, many among which now constitute the basis for the enterprise logs of the Chambers in Epirus.
A CD-ROM on cultural heritage, Zeus and Pyrrhus, CD-ROMs on the churches in Epirus, and quite recently one of our last projects is that we are building a system which aims at promoting the traditional products of Epirus in collaboration with the World Arts and Crafts Organisation that we have been hosting in Metsovo since March. It is a world organisation with more than 600.000 members all over the world, and it is a great success that it now is in
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Epirus. On the environmental front we have soft actions, studies, promotion actions, the use of alternative energy sources, etc.
Coming back to our topic, which is methodology, an integral part of any rational approach is evaluation. We carry out evaluation; it is a continuous process. We have internal procedures established and evaluators who help us on specific issues. As a result of evaluation, we can review our objectives and directions, and this is a very important factor for success.
In the following two slides, I just wanted to give you some information about the useful conclusions of our experience so far. What plays a major role and is a major key factor for success is the appropriate methodology. We have already talked about evaluation. Strict project management is necessary, which is a difficult task. Mr. Vasalos emphasized the importance of human resources in introducing innovation. One of the greatest difficulties in Epirus is to find human resources which have the know-how either at the level of languages or at the level of technocratic knowledge, use of technologies, etc., people who can stay in Epirus. I found it very funny when Mr. Orphanoudakis said that he cannot find people with appropriate qualifications to stay in Crete . If he cannot find them in Crete, can you imagine what the situation is in Epirus?
Of course, two interrelated factors are the adjustment in local conditions and application at the local level, the pilot application. I think it was again Mr. Orphanoudakis who mentioned the difficulty of the penetration of new technologies and the readiness level. I think this is true for any kind of innovation. There is always a certain reaction to change. This is also a feature of the people of Epirus and maybe of mountain populations in general.
However, we tried to implement best practices at the local level, on a practical level, and we believe that this makes innovation somehow more easy to digest, if I may use this expression. As for the exchange of experience and information, I heard with great pleasure today that in Piemonte many of the methods they use are very similar to ours, which means that we are headed in the right direction.
And certainly cooperation with the various agencies at the local and regional levels is another factor for success. I want to believe that we have
95 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 been established in Epirus as an agency which works with great will and willingness to succeed. We have made a lot of efforts. Just to give you an example, we organised a cycle of information events on European issues. We were ready to make a journey with our managing authority, but due to the recent unpleasant events globally, this was postponed.
Of course we don’t have a policy. We are an apolitical agency. We do not even try to influence policy. Certain complaints always exist, but this is a human feature, and in general I believe that the experience of our agency in the last ten years proves that non-governmental organisations can and must have a role in the planning and the implementation of regional development actions. This morning we heard a lot about dialogue. Non-governmental organisations have also a voice, and I think it is a voice that the governmental organisations on all levels and the governmental agencies, have an obligation to listen to, and they will benefit from it . Thank you very much for your attention.
Ms.D.PSALTOPOULOS: Thank you very much, Ms. Asimakopoulou, for a very interesting presentation. Your presentation clearly shows the important role of non-governmental organisations in regional development. There is a framework of diversified interventions, and through good organisation and the promotion of partnerships and through stringent evaluation, they can play an important role. And now Ms. Lazari from the Municipality of Patras Development Company will present the experience of the Development Company of the Municipality of Patras.
Ms.A.LAZARI: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I think you are all very tired; therefore I will try and be as brief as possible. If you need more details on our programme, you are all invited, on Saturday, to the celebration for the closing of our programme after seven years of implementation. We are celebrating this very important event of the completion of our project.
Our URBAN sub-programme of Patras belongs to the Community initiative URBAN. You know that the Community initiative URBAN is an urban development initiative and it includes financial aid for areas suffering from unfavourable financial indicators. The selected area of Patras, for those of you that know our city, is an industrial area. In Patras we have a lot of industries that have now suspended their operations because of a de-industrialisation
96 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 process. Therefore we have a lot of problems of unemployment and damage to the environment.
There are two big social housing projects, a district with Rom people and a settlement of refugees as well. We tried to develop actions that aimed at upgrading the knowledge and the skills of human resources, and supporting the unemployed and other groups in the population. We implemented 46 training actions, 13,900 hours of training and 264 trainees participated in these training sessions.
The Centre for Promotion of Employment was set up, and this provided information, vocational guidance and support to the unemployed. Another structure was ADEPNET, an office that through organised programmes gave an opportunity to citizens of our town to familiarise themselves with computers – mainly young people but we also have adult citizens who still have time to acquire this new knowledge. We provide these services free of charge for the time being, and we do not plan to include them in a paying framework.
And finally another very important operation is workshops for the disabled. From the point of view of urban infrastructure, the urban plan has not been respected, we have a very badly organised building pattern, and when Community representatives came to our city they couldn’t really identify the roads. It was very difficult for us to include road construction projects, although these were of major importance for our area. Now we have completed our project, and one could safely say that the urban environment has been upgraded. Urban infrastructure has become more decent for the citizens. Twelve urban remodelling actions have taken place, and twelve road projects have been completed. The appropriate social infrastructure was created in order to house all the actions that I previously mentioned. We constructed two multifunctional centres, and we restored the old slaughterhouses. They are 12 old buildings which were used as slaughterhouses and will now be given over to new activities for the promotion of local products, which is one of the objectives of our project. We will organise exhibition areas for local products, and we will also promote the achievements of the university of our town, since this is a very important factor for development.
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The results of our programme have been very important. We don’t have the evaluation indicators for the time being, but I can say that the physical and economic objects have been implemented to a satisfactory extent. We have implemented Community initiatives such as YOUTHSTART and NOW.
I would like to say a few words about the mechanisms for the implementation of our project, that is, talk about the way in which we implemented this project at ADEP. We are called ADEP; the Municipality of Patras Development Company. The ADEP existed before the URBAN Community initiative, and this is important, because a question was asked at the beginning on how will we implement the URBAN initiative. The Municipality Development Company, ADEP, was already in place and therefore we managed to gain a lot of time and we used this time in the implementation of the project.
Our company, ADEP, was the managing agency and the implementation agency at the same time. As the managing agency, it was in charge of the implementation of measures and it followed the timetable of the monitoring committee and the secretariat. As an implementation agency, ADEP was in charge of the implementation of the projects and actions, and it commissioned projects, found the contractors or sometimes it implemented the projects itself, especially soft actions of the European Social Fund.
Now, one month before the end of the programme, one could state that we have finally reached our objective. When the approval of these projects by the European Union was announced, we were very happy because this very important project would be implemented in Patras. But we were very concerned as well, because we did not know how we would implement this project in practice. One of the problems that we had in the beginning, and it took up a lot of time during the implementation phase, had to do with how to implement Community initiatives. URBAN, especially, was an urban development initiative; it was an initiative with no previous experience in Greece. There was experience about YOUTHSTART and NOW, but not about URBAN. Therefore, we had to find the appropriate institutional framework, and we had to investigate ways in which we could implement this initiative and achieve our objectives.
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Let us look at the problems that we faced, starting with the planning phase. During the planning phase we wanted to design a programme which would reflect the needs of the eligible area. It had to be feasible and it had to be adapted to the requirements of the programme, as far as eligibility is concerned. The planning authority was the Municipality of Patras. Through a series of consultations with the local agencies and the social partners, the Municipality of Patras set the objectives and defined the projects that could be included in the programme. The ADEP, the development company, had a very important role to play, because we had to master all the details which dealt with the implementation of the programme. We tried to resolve conflicts relating to the priorities that should be assigned, and we were also the animator, because for every single phase ADEP had to play this encouragement role. Information was very important.
Our close collaboration with the Ministry of the Environment and Public Works was also very important, because the Ministry made a lot of efforts to obtain information from the European Union, for instance, and the Programme Manager assigned by the Ministry of National Economy assisted us a lot. They helped us in drafting the original project and the partnership that was mentioned in previous presentations was very helpful for us, as well. There were some hesitations; there were some doubts, but this partnership was effective and it stayed with us until the end of the programme. And through this partnership, we participated in the implementation of some of the objectives of the programme. The human resources of the development company had a very important role. There was a clear job description for the human resources of the ADEP, and we knew how the programme should be managed.
I could mention a weakness of the programme during this phase, which had to do with the European Social Fund measures. There was a delay in starting the implementation of actions. We were somewhere near the end of the ERDF project implementation, while we were only just starting with the ESF projects.
During the implementation phase, it was important for us to monitor the project on the basis of the initial design, modify some targets and make the most of our funding within the timetable required. Human resources were also
99 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 very important here, and the internal organisation had an important role to play. We had very good record-keeping, and we used new technology.
We attached great importance to the publicity of the programme. Our programme has a multifaceted approach, and we invited the interested parties so that they could participate in various programmes, training programmes, for instance, and we attached great importance to publicity, because we managed public money, European Union and public money, and we wanted to have transparency. We frequently reported to the Board of Directors, to the Municipal Council. Transparency was a major concern for us. Sometimes we put a lot of pressure on the administration, and a weakness of the programme during this phase was the computer system that was used by the Ministry of National Economy. It didn’t really help us, because we could not enter data as required both by the regions and the Ministry of National Economy. Anyway, we used our own programme, but this programme could not be used by the Ministry of National Economy, and now that the Ministry of National Economy is asking us for this information we are obliged to enter all the information for the second time.
During the completion phase, our objective was to have all of our projects fully utilised. We wanted to secure continuity for our actions. The structures that were created have a certain cost. Structures are accepted by the local community, but the local community cannot finance the structures. We secured provisional financing from the budget of the Municipality of Patras, and we are confident that we will manage and use other innovative actions, and we will find other EU funds in order to continue with our actions. A very important item in this last phase, the phase of completion, was the financial flow of the programme. Some other speakers mentioned that as well. It is very important for the implementation agency that there be a very good flow, so that we can have successful negotiations with all our partners, because you should not forget that the implementation agency must refer to the local community, to the European Union institutions, to the citizens, for any delays or for any weaknesses.
Emphasis was also placed on the evaluation of the programme and there are some indicators for the evaluation. Another Community programme, the LEONARDO programme, has helped us because, along with the town of Marseilles, we created a method for the evaluation of ESF projects. And now
100 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 we will have time, after the completion of the programme, to proceed with its evaluation.
You might think that some of the items that I have mentioned are self- evident. In practice, we would not like to underestimate these items, because the solutions that we have found for our problems have been very important. As implementation and managing authorities for this programme, we can say that we have at least learned that the very important experience acquired by ADEP will be very useful to us in future. We now know how to tackle our weaknesses in any similar project. Thank you very much.
Mr.D.PSALTOPOULOS: We thank Ms. Lazari for her very interesting presentation. I would like to add that nothing is self-evident. There are successful examples and there are less successful examples. Anyway, this programme was a difficult one in a very difficult area, and the impression that prevails is that it has been quite successful.
Now please, if you want to make a comment or ask a question, state your name and the organisation that you come from.
Mr.C.KALOGIROU: Chryssostomos Kalogirou from the special service for the management of the Regional Operational Programme in Central Macedonia. I would like to ask the panel speaker, about what she mentioned in relation to the implementation agency, and then the partnership scheme. I raise this question because it is something that is of great concern for the next period. The special services for the management of the programmes are concerned and the state authorities are also concerned. I personally believe that it would be a wrong approach to seek an implementation agency for the integrated urban development programmes. These are issues of partnerships that will guarantee the mobilization and the participation of more social partners. Reference was made to, on the one hand the municipal company which commissioned projects or supervised them and on the other hand this partnership scheme. I want to ask how this partnership scheme functioned, how it operated in Patras and what were its competencies. Thank you.
Mr.D.PSALTOPOULOS: Any other question or comment?
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Ms.G.ZEMBILIADOU: From Western Macedonia Managing Authority. I want to ask whether there were private resources in the Patras programme.
Mr.A.KALIANTZIDIS: I have a question which is addressed to all the panellists. I wonder whether you can inform us about when the integrated programme for the development of mountainous regions –where the Ministry of Agriculture is involved- will become operational in Greece. I would like to congratulate all four speakers, who made brilliant presentations, and I have some comments addressed to Mr. Peter Ramsden, with whom I have had the opportunity to collaborate in the framework of Article 10 on micro-credits. There is a certain reluctance on behalf of the financial institutions because there is a rather high cost. In Greece, apart from the case of the Prefecture of Kozani, where there is a so-called local resource which supports such initiatives, I don’t know of any other example of micro-credit. We have venture capital for bigger enterprises and New Economy enterprises, but we don’t have an example of local venture capital, that is local funds that will be developed and will support microentrepreneurship. I wonder whether you can inform us about this. Could the local and regional agencies inform us?
Mr.D.PSALTOPOULOS: I will give the floor to the panellists now, to give their answers. Ms. Lazari.
Ms.A.LAZARI: As regards the implementation agency, it was an issue of concern at the beginning. Which is the implementation agency? What does URBAN consider as the implementation agency, apart from the managing agency, which was described in the programming contract between the three Ministries (Labour, National Economy and Environment - Public Works), the Municipality of Patras and ADEP? If you had asked me five years ago, I wouldn’t have known how to answer, but for us it finally came out that the implementation agency was the ADEP. Within the Greek legal framework, the ADEP made calls for tenders for the construction projects. The same went for the training projects. The Vocational Training Centres submitted bids and implemented the training actions. For the other projects, however, we didn’t have the necessary framework. So ADEP used external collaborators and leased the premises and equipment, with exactly the same managing framework that we have in the EQUAL and ADAPT employment initiatives. However, in practice, although we paid for the expenses, there was
102 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 considerable participation of the social partners. I’ll just give you two examples and we can discuss further examples if you wish.
First of all, we had the participation of the Chamber of Achaia. This is a very active organisation. We collaborated very closely, especially in the guidelines for the evaluation of personnel. We had a software programme that we used to evaluate the personnel of enterprises, and to evaluate the skills of unemployed people, in order to assist them with vocational guidance. We implemented this together with the Chamber of Achaia. There was close collaboration with this organisation as regards implementation. At the level of planning we had more partners participating.
Another example: the productive workshops and training actions. For the disabled, there is the Patras Association of Disabled People and other associations as well, depending on the handicaps that these people may have, and they will be responsible for the implementation of these productive workshops. The municipality offers the infrastructure. The ADEP offers the multi-function centres, and the implementation will be undertaken by the associations of disabled people themselves.
These are just two examples of the participation of partners. As far as private participation goes, there was no private participation in the funding scheme. The resources, EUR11 million, came from the Community ERDF and ESF at 75 per cent, and 25 per cent was the Ministry of Environment and Public Works contribution.
Mr.P.RAMSDEN: About when the urban and mountain programme will become operational, I can't offer any comment, but maybe someone else in the audience knows the answer to that one. Soon, we would hope.
But seriously, the issue of micro-credit and local finance initiatives: We recently conducted a European-wide survey of Community development finance initiatives, and Greece is not very advanced compared to some other member states, but don’t worry, no one is very advanced in this particular field. Perhaps the French are the furthest forward. And secondly, we consider that all of the European economies have the potential to think creatively about how locally based financial initiatives can help to develop local economies. And one thing that is happening here in Greece is that at an international level
103 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 there are things called the Basel Accords, which are forcing up the size of banks. It makes it harder and harder for a small bank to carry on existing. And this is threatening some of your rural and cooperative banks. But some of this lending activity that we’ve been developing doesn’t require you to be a bank. It’s possible, depending on the member state, to do this without a bank statute. So there is certainly room for manoeuvre.
Another example of what you might call micro-equity is what we call patient equity, the sort of investment that doesn’t have to have an immediate return, but could wait perhaps two years, three years, this certainly has potential for development in all sorts of sectors, the cultural sector being just one of them. And as we mentioned, we are working specifically with a very large venture capital house in the UK to develop quite a small fund worth about EUR60 million, which will be a nationwide fund but focusing only on small enterprises in the most disadvantaged areas. And we are hoping that that will be launched by the spring of next year. One of the big advantages of these funds is that they can be revolving. I don’t think Structural Funds will end in Greece, but there will be some places in Greece that are no longer eligible for Objective I after 2006. If we can create institutions now that can evolve into the future, then we get far better value money for our potential euro, for each euro that we spend, because we can still be spending it in 2010 effectively. And these are very powerful instruments, although the set-up is sometimes expensive; the running and so on can be very, very lean and very cheap and very cost-effective. Thank you.
Ms.E.DI BELLA: I can add only some suggestions. I don’t know when this kind of programme will start in Greece. I know that in Italy we will start the LEADER programme and the INTERREG PROGRAMME, between the end of this year and the beginning of next year. The Objective II programme will start this month. We are late, these are programmes that should have started at the beginning of this year .
Only one suggestion, I think that the important thing is that the local communities begin to plan and to learn to plan together. And then you can find money from European funds, from regional funds, from national funds, from different funds. Maybe also from private funds, foundations, for example. The difficult thing is to plan and to constitute, to create the right partnership, private and public, at the different institutional levels. This is the difficult thing.
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When you have planned your actions and your objectives it’s going to be much more easy to find money. The difficulty is for all to agree on what you want to do. I cannot say we don’t have any problems of financial availability, but sometimes we have enough money. The history of the utilisation of Structural Funds shows us that many regions in Europe –Italy is one of them– didn’t use all the money they had. The problem is not to have enough money sometimes; it is to use money effectively. And to be effective, I think we have to get the right partnership at the local level. This is the first thing; then fund- raising comes next .
Mr.D.PSALTOPOULOS: In concluding, after thanking, first of all, the European Commission for organising these workshops I would like to say that the promotion of a developmental approach which is based on integrated actions for the development of urban, rural and mountainous regions, needs political will, it needs imagination and it needs efficiency. This is not a hierarchy. You can draw your own conclusions about what is most important among these. We need to plan effectively and efficiently. We need to decide to what extent we will decentralise. We need to promote the partnership scheme, and we need to ensure coordination and clear-cut roles.
The experiences that we have heard about I hope will give us a better idea about what we need to do with all those things in order to ensure the efficient implementation of these integrated actions. Thank you very much for your attention.
CONCLUSIONS OF THE WORKSHOP
Mr.R.SHOTTON: So Mr. Reid, please. Would you like to start off?
Mr.A.REID: I wanted to briefly say a few words on what we mean by governance and the changing roles of regional and local authorities. That was really the discussion at the start of the day during the introductory speeches.
Secondly, I want, for each of the three areas, to try and sum up what has been achieved in Greece from an outsider’s perspective and what remains to be done, and then draw some lessons for CSF III and beyond.
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What was the purpose of today? It was about not what but how to do it. That was how Mr. Shotton introduced it. I think we heard a lot about what and not a lot about how. I mean that was my personal impression, so I think maybe we could have focused a bit more on the real mechanisms and I think we might have learned a little bit more. What we were looking at in particular was how to do more and do it better in the existing framework. We are not going to change or revolutionise Greek constitutional law, even in the next six years.
I took this table from the working paper on the EU Governance White Paper. I just wanted to comment on it briefly. I think you can see there are four types of states that have been identified, and you go from the so-called ‘unity’ states to the federal states. And one of the conclusions I have, as someone who has worked in quite a number of these countries, both in a very federal state like Belgium, my own country, Scotland, which is part of the devolved UK. and in Greece, I have been here quite a lot over the last four or five years. One of the conclusions I have drawn is that it’s not so much about what’s really done in terms of what your constitutional powers are, but what people on the ground, what institutions on the ground, do to organise themselves, to leverage the maximum return from the possibilities that laws and institutions give them. So I think we have to be very careful and very cautious when we say that because Greece is still very much a unitary state, despite the sort of reforms that were discussed and presented earlier on today, that you can't do as much as you can in Belgium. I think. You can do a lot, and I think a lot of the examples that were shown today show that you actually can achieve quite a lot, even within a relatively centralised state.
So one of my conclusions, is that the constitutional situation is only an excuse, and not a barrier to actually doing local and regional development projects. I think one of the key points that came out of Michel Lacave’s speech was that if you are looking at the French situation, and I think that’s also an issue here in Greece, if you are decentralising tasks it shouldn’t be about imposing national funding priorities on the local or regional level, but you do have to ensure some sort of sectoral coherence between national and local policies.
And I think another important point is that a sort of “one size fits all” decentralisation is not the answer. Again, the United Kingdom is a very clear
106 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 example of that. Peter talked a lot about the complex situation in England. That actually only applies to England; Scotland is very different. Wales is different again from Scotland, Northern Ireland, and so on. So each region within a country may have to find its own system of governance, may have to find its own way of dealing with implementing these projects, and it may not be appropriate to give full powers to all regions tomorrow. It may be much better to allow them to learn through the various initiatives and projects over a number of years, to build up what I think, in Kevin Morgan’s paper which was one that was handed out in the pack, is called “social capital”.
This is really about Greece and my vision of Greece. I think the local employment initiatives were presented quite clearly and it was easy to understand that. The innovations I know very well, having followed the various RIS and RITTS projects for a number of years. Then I have tried to sum up and be general on the last urban and mountainous areas presentations, rather than focus on what people said.
So in terms of the local employment initiatives one of the clear messages to come out was that the planning and strategy seem to be in place. You have the national action programme, you have the ROPs and so on at regional level. People were quite clear about that this morning. The planning and strategy-building has been done; what we need to get to now is actually implementing and the reality on the ground. You’ve got a lot of interesting experience from the Territorial Pacts; it’s a limited number of regions that have implemented them in the CSF II, but I think it’s much more than that. Today we could only give a short aperçu of what has been done. Local partnership dynamics probably need to be spread to more areas. I think that was one clear message coming out, that maybe 7-10 areas in Greece have really developed this type of experience and that there is a need to do a lot more right across the country.
And another message that seemed to come out of a number of the Greek speeches and a lot of comments from the floor was the sort of incoherence between top-down national initiatives and local efforts. So more needs to be done on the vertical as well as the horizontal levels, in terms of partnership and planning.
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Issues for discussion: Again, these were taken both from the Greek presentations and also from the other member states’ experiences. How to go from strategy to reality in the field of local employment? There was the infernal machine of Graham Meadows that was mentioned by the President of that part of the workshop.
I think maybe we tend to use and blame bureaucracy. And state aid was another issue that was mentioned. I’ve always found people on the ground to be very ingenious. And again I think the lady from Patras gave a good example. She must have listed about eight or nine Community initiatives that she managed to get funding from. So people can make it work if they want to. So I think blaming bureaucracy and machinery is only one, rather easy way out. I think you have to be much more self-critical. Again, the comments by the President about the need to maybe put in a few weekends, to get tenders and so on launched. Maybe that’s a part of reality in Greece; I’m not that well placed to comment on that.
It seemed to me also that in Greece, perhaps compared with Finland for instance, the tools for understanding the real employment situation were missing. There was this whole discussion of disguised unemployment. Qualitative as well as quantitative indicators of the employment situation are needed.
And a very simple point here: Are they, the private sector willing to put up some money, either for strategy or for implementing some projects? I mean money, in the end, is a very solid and reliable criterion for interest.
In terms of innovation and the information society, I was a bit shocked. Someone asked from the floor how many regions in Greece have a business plan for innovation or the information society. Julia Tsaliki listed them all. And it seemed that the national level didn’t know what was being done at the regional level. As someone who has worked in that field, that’s a great disappointment to me. But is that really the case? Do people at the national level not know all the work that has been done at the regional level, and so on? I think you have to take into account what has been done, and that was stressed, in a number of fields. There has been a whole series of actions, both in employment and in innovation and information society and other areas, over the last six years. You can't go back to zero and start re-creating new
108 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 business plans for the regions. You have your operational framework, but I think you need to look at the strategies that have been developed, build on them, and so on.
What I think has been achieved, and again it’s from an outsider’s perspective who has had the opportunity to follow a number of these projects, both in central Macedonia, Thessaly, Western Macedonia and so on, is that there has been significant learning. A lot of that is in the public sector, but there has been some in the broader partnership as well. And I think again this is one of the key messages coming out of Peter Ramsden’s presentation as well, that in some ways these actions and these projects, not only innovation but the other areas as well, are about changing mindsets, are about changing the perception of decision-makers, companies, NGOs, and so on about what can be actually achieved in the region and what are the issues that need to be focused on.
I think there is a greater consensus on priorities between regional people, but I don’t think – and again, it’s a sort of external criticism – but I don’t think there has been enough mainstreaming within the Operational Programmes. I think one of the good examples of that was Central Macedonia where the RTP was developed and the RIS, and yet the sort of innovation sub-programme that was already existing or the technology development sub- programme that was already existing was not using all its funds. The private sector presence has been involved, especially industrial associations, but it’s probably still not strong enough. So there is more to be done.
In terms of issues for discussion, I think again if you look at the sort of Nordic experience in the northern EU, they stimulated early involvement of the private sector by pilot actions. They got the actions running at the same time as the strategy development, and I think that’s something that we’ve seen not only in that area but in a number of other regions. In western Scotland, for instance, there was another example where they actually got projects going which involved business but it gave them a return. Again, flagship projects, defining one or two key projects which people believe, the consensus believes will change things are important. And there again I think there is a variable leadership role. You can have the regional authority or the regional fund, implementing some. You can have a university implementing another, and so on. Again, I think is a sort of variable geometry of who can be involved in
109 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 national implementation and design. Probably there’s a need to take account of differing economic realities.
The primary sector and tourism are very important here in Greece, and I was quite startled by the figures for Central Macedonia, which I thought was a much more industrial and service-orientated economy, and I think it’s about 30 per cent primary sector. And I think only a few of the RIS and RITTS exercises, and perhaps Western Macedonia was one of the best, have actually integrated the primary sector into their analysis.
In view of the information society, I think the speech that was given was very focused on the sort of public service or public sector aspects of IS. Perhaps more can be done to broaden out and include not only the public sector services but also other people. I hope that innovative actions will make it easier to mainstream, but that remains to be proven.
As I said, probably the most difficult item to summarise and give a broad overview of is the integrated urban and mountain regions, perhaps because the two subjects are so different. But I think there were some interesting key points that came up. The discussion of the Egnatia Foundation suggested that a sort of NGO structure can be an interesting intermediary structure in Greek mountain areas where there perhaps aren’t the sort of mountain communities or other types of intercommunal structures which exist in other countries. Keeping and upgrading human resources seems to be a key factor for both types of regions, urban and mountain. It seems to be something that has been dealt with in both the projects that were presented: focusing on making the zones pleasant to live in, and quality of life again is something that seems to be common, but obviously there are very different perspectives. And I think also that with regard to the URBAN project, a lot of the explanation was about the fact that an existing development company of the town was used, but that this did not in itself solve all the problems with implementation. So although you do have some instruments, some vehicles for implementing such projects, it doesn’t seem to solve all the problems, and it may be the case that the European Union’s regulations, or is it the Greek institutional models, are problematic.
In terms of issues for discussion, I think one of the key points to come out was that you have to make these things concrete for business. You had
110 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 the Community financial initiatives that Peter Ramsden talked about; you have sort of quality labels, trademarks for food, and agricultural or mountainous areas. I think one of the focuses was to defend the specificities of the area, and although that was something that I took from the Torino example, in many respects it’s also, I think, something that has to be promoted about urban areas. I mean urban areas have got a lot going for them, but people see them often as being, well, polluted, run-down and so on. I think you have to defend what’s unique about that area and determine what is the potential of those areas. And sell it, that’s the next point. Sell outside of the zone, and make sure you get that message across, not just in the zone but outside, either through marketable products or publicity campaigns and so on.
And the last point , I think, the Torino example was very interesting but seemed to be based very much on institutions in Italy. So there’s really a question: Can good examples of that type be transferred, or are they embedded in institutions?
So to conclude, three or four overall lessons. One, for me, is political will, and again that’s something I’ve seen change over the last four or five years here in Greece, again mainly through the RIS-type activities . At the beginning, it was very difficult to get the Secretary Generals of the region involved. They were very dubious about the whole scheme. It was very difficult to get the ministries in Athens to cough up with some co-financing, and so on. One of the key aspects, I think, is to get everyone informed and involved in all levels of projects, where it’s necessary, from an early stage. The sort of political will and impetus behind the projects has changed. So the lack of a regional government in Greece has not always meant a lack of political support, but perhaps – and that’s something again coming out of Michel Lacave’s speech – perhaps some sort of great “contractualisation” could increase the effectiveness of implementation in Greece. Can we not envisage some form of non-binding agreement, such as in Finland or so on, in the specific sectors in order to speed up the implementation of these types of initiatives?
The second key lesson for me is that you need a sort of champion for these projects. Again, that’s something in the theoretical literature; that comes back very often. The political support is necessary, but the existence of a champion, whether it’s a foundation, whether it’s a university such as Urenio
111 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 in Thessaloniki for the central Macedonia RIS, and so on, is vital to such initiatives. The credibility of the champion is vital, so they have to enjoy the support of a wide enough group of people. I think that’s something again that comes back to the whole consensus-building process. I think Greece has successful cases of champions. I think one of the issues that was raised from the floor and also from the speech by Mr. Michaelidis at the beginning of the first session was, within the new Structural Fund framework, will there be a need to change the champions or at least the implementing type agencies, and so on? It seems to me it’s something that needs to be debated between you and agreed upon with the Commission.
Peter talked about enterprises, enterprises, enterprises. I think another point that came out was networks. It’s a lovely word; it means a lot of things to a lot of people, but I think what was very clear is that you need both types of networks or partnerships, whatever you want to call them. You need horizontal ones at local level which really build the sustainable development, whether it’s in the mountainous areas or around innovation for companies and so on; it doesn’t really matter. You need horizontal cooperation to make sure that people are pushing in the same direction. And you also need vertical support in terms of local, regional and national ministry, in order to make sure that you're not, at the local level, pushing against something that the national Ministry is never going to fund in the next five or six years. It’s really wasting human resources and financial resources. So you have to have that sort of cooperation, and speak in the same language, both horizontally and vertically. At local level, building networks is about trust and dialogue. This takes time and money, and I think, again, this is something that is not always understood. Politicians, as a general rule, like to have a new building to open, like to have a new piece of motorway to open. A lot of these projects are about human input, human dialogue. I think the Prefecture of Magnesia made that point very clearly. It’s about sitting around the table talking about how to promote the Prefecture most efficiently. It takes time and money – human resources aren’t free, so this is something that has to perhaps be put a bit higher up the political authority ladder. At sectoral level, and here I’m talking about, for instance, employment policy, industrial policy and so on run by national Ministries, again there were a lot of issues coming out of the discussions, and the need for some form of contractual agreement or non- binding letter or whatever you want to call it – common business plan; it doesn’t really matter – but some form of agreement that allows you to work in
112 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 a framework over a fixed period, whether it’s a Structural Fund period or a national implementation period doesn’t really matter again, that allows you to push forward faster and not run into roadblocks because the national level is pushing something faster or slower than the regional level wants it to happen. And involving the private sector to me is a difficulty, and I think there you have to remember – and Peter, I think, made that point very clearly – the business is about making money. If you're only talking about public sector interests you're not going to get them involved.
Last point, last slide. Tools – one of the issues for this seminar was what sort of tools do we need? I think one of the debates that comes out, from my point of view, is that you have a lot of planning, a lot of development to do. I think there is a distinction. I think planning - the sort of government plans, the Operational Programmes, etc. which are for a defined period, with specific objectives - is very much harder to change over time. Of course, you can make adjustments mid-term and so on, but it’s not a process. Strategy is about process, so it has to be updated, changed to needs, and it’s not necessarily the same thing as a programme or a plan. It seems to me that the level of analysis of needs, both in terms of business needs, unemployment and so on, is still very weak, and this is something that needs to be tackled and maybe more money should be put into that, both at national and regional levels. And perhaps there should be more focus on the perspective analysis, and again I think, learning from the French experience, in the perspective analysis that they do each region has a plan I think up to about 2020. It’s a long way ahead, but it enables them to say well, this is what we think, on the basis of a number of working groups and so on, these are issues for the region in the next 10-15 years. So if we’re talking about an area, which is not within that sort of range, then perhaps we’re not talking about the right thing.
I think there was a lot of discussion on what we learnt, both within Greece but also from other regions. I think transnational cooperation can be crucial. Knowing where your region stands, in terms of benchmarking type processes, can also be crucial. Perhaps there there’s a role for the Commission in promoting such learning, making sure that networks under innovative actions and so on are really about cooperation and transfer, and not just about re-inventing the wheel once again.
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And then I think the last point for me is fundamental, you have to give some sort of immediate return to the private sector to get them in. In Thessaly, for instance, there was a very interesting example in which they developed an innovation fair for the first time. They gave innovation awards as part of the RIS. It also allowed them, at the same time, to do a survey of the companies who wanted to be involved in that fair. It gave the companies a showcase for their products. Everyone’s happy. You get full cooperation because you give the businessmen something back for their time. The sort of rewards - the hundred high-growth companies in the UK - it’s an interesting idea. How many high-growth companies are there in Greece and which types of areas, and so on? Expensive cheese: that’s another nice one for people in the rural areas. I think seriously you have to make sure that in all these strategies and all these projects and actions you are making sure that there is a relatively immediate return or interest for the private sector.
Then I think the last point, and this is really for the future but maybe you have to start learning now, is EU/public money. Thank you.
Ms.G.ZEMBILIADOU: Thank you very much, Mr. Reid. It has been a really difficult job for you to synthesise and summarise a long day’s work. From the point of view of the regions, I would like to say that Mr. Reid has given us the basic points, but I would like to say that there is no single recipe for the needs of each region. A lot of best practices exist, however, and these best practices are always adapted to the realities of the regions where they have been implemented. All these projects and best practice examples had one common point: they had a vision. And we also have a vision for our regions. And what Mr. Reid said is true, as well. On the regional and on the local level, there are strategies and there are plans and there are projects which must be implemented. It is the first time, though, that the regions have been called upon to combine and use integrated projects which necessitate the contribution of all Structural Funds and not only Community programmes but also national and regional programmes.
Innovation is also very important, so that we can have very good results. The question of employment is the basic requirement for all our regions. The territorial pacts and the new approach to these initiatives is another feature that came out of our presentations. New technology is also a basic requirement nowadays. We must use the information society facilities.
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We must use new mechanisms, new institutional frameworks, and this is the difficult part.
I hope that the conclusions of this workshop will be a guide for us, a sort of manual, vade mecum, that we can take with us to the regions and work with. We need continuous collaboration as well, and this is something new for the local level. Constant collaboration and dialogue, an open dialogue forum between the regions, the central administration, the local agencies and the private sector. We need synergy between all the regulations and provisions. And we will also need to combine the series of managing practices that we are called upon to implement.
Any questions? Any comments?
Mr.N.PAPADODIMAS: I don’t have a question. If we have finished with the discussion I can take the floor for the conclusions. We have reached the end of today’s workshop. There doesn’t seem to be a great need for conclusions. Everybody will draw their own conclusions and take them away with them.
I would like to thank the European Commission for their initiative. Thank you for organising today’s workshop and tomorrow’s workshop, and I hope tomorrow’s workshop will be equally successful. I would like to thank you, not as a compliment because we have worked together for a long time. I would like to be very frank and thank you, because I think it has been a very successful meeting. This workshop has been very successful, not because it has led to very specific and widely accepted conclusions. It has been very successful precisely because it has been, in my opinion, an opportunity for a fundamental conclusion to be drawn. That is that those questions that we dealt with cannot be resolved with a single recipe or with a single model. These are constantly evolving questions. These are questions that depend on many factors and parameters, and actually the only way to approach these issues is through such contact, such forums and workshops.
Mr. Reid made a valuable presentation. You said that we heard a lot about what we want to do. And we didn’t hear much about how we are going to do it. That was a very good point, and my first personal conclusion would be that we all know where we want to go. We all know that we want to go to
115 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 point A, let’s say. We express it in a variety of ways, but we all know that we want to reach that point. The question is how we will get there.
I have some very brief comments. We talked a lot about decentralisation, about regional development, the relationships between the national and the regional level; it is a never-ending question. Decentralisation and the structure of the state is an eternal question; it is an evolving process, and what we should know is that administrative changes and administrative reforms will never end. At the very moment when a state is implementing a new act, a new piece of legislation, a new need is being born. And this new need creates a new environment with a need for new regulations. When we look for something new, we don’t have a complete experience of the previous steps. This is an inhibiting factor for good planning, but it is the only way in which we can move forward.
I think that what has not been clearly expressed is the relationship between the institutions that already exist and the requirements dictated by the 3rd CSF. The third Community Support Framework includes very specific provisions. There is a long series of examples and practices implemented in various regions and countries, but we need discipline and we need to prioritise all of them. We must have in mind the general framework. Are we talking about a rural development action? Are we talking about urban actions? Are we talking about an innovative action? The situation is always different. And if we had drawn a dividing line between these types of initiatives and actions, perhaps we would have drawn an initial conclusion on how and what.
My first conclusion is that all the examples that we have heard show us that there are similar objectives and similar difficulties. The paths that we follow and the objectives that we promote in all countries have to do with innovation, integrated interventions, mobilisation of the local community, synergies, bringing all agencies and all stakeholders to the same table. We all want to do that. And we have all given our own experience in our personal way. The difficulties that we face in our efforts also seem to be very similar, to be almost identical. Starting from Finland and going down to Crete, we always have difficulties related to with the central state, the local level, the private agencies, the public agencies, the agencies that have been reformed, and so on. We all want to enlarge the spectrum of participating agencies. These are common difficulties. We have different ways of tackling these difficulties. And
116 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 each one of us might say that their method has been successful or has failed in certain respects.
I have especially noted the point about small and medium-sized companies, about micro-credit, and so on. Recently in Greece there has been a very important development regarding the merger of two major banks, and financial news globally is about mergers and acquisitions of huge companies in telecommunications and financial deals with subsidiaries of big companies, because big multinationals want to control all the levels. You will tell me that this is the case on the national and global level, but when we talk about the local level we have to talk about local and micro-enterprises. I don’t know however whether the situation is any different in Epirus or in Scotland. We may have common objectives and problems, but there is huge diversity in the different systems, different mechanisms and different administrations that we use in tackling the problems .
So our conclusion is that there are no models. There are no models that can be transferred; there are experiences, though, valuable experiences and necessary experiences that we must describe and observe. But I can’t really believe that I could transfer the excellent experience of Italy or Norway to our specific local example.
There is another very important point. The private sector is not sufficiently involved, and the private sector must be included in these efforts. Entrepreneurship which is an integral part of the New Economy, was not designed and is not being implemented in order to serve the Operational Programmes. And this is a huge deficit. There is the entrepreneurship emerging from the development of the financial policy, following globalisation and so on and so forth. This is totally different, however. Operational programmes, funds and resources try to implement local, regional, national and Community policies. The private sector could play a very important role in Greece, as well, but it hasn’t done so. In Greece we expect the state to do everything, and even when we give the opportunity to private individuals to do something, the state must have everything prepared.
We must all get mobilized, not within a new model but, along a new investigation path. We will be glad to listen to tomorrow’s workshop. Not only tomorrow’s workshop but January’s workshop as well, because the topics will
117 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 be similar and will complement the knowledge and experience that we have acquired today. Thank you very much.
Mr.R.SHOTTON: One word from Lea Verstraete and one word from me.
Ms.L.VERSTRAETE: I just want to say that I think that we have had very interesting discussions. And it’s true, perhaps we have not answered all the questions we had initially. But we have had good examples of good practice from different member states, as well as good examples of best practice from Greece. I must say I strongly believe we can learn a lot from these good practices, and I also think that there is a certain level of transferability. Even if you cannot take good examples and transfer them totally, I think you can take elements from them and try to transfer those. So from that point of view, I think this was a very valuable experience.
Now it’s clear that this was only a start. We have just elaborated on the general framework in which we work and given some ideas. We must not take it further now. In fact Ms. Christofilopoulou has already said that we want to discuss local employment initiatives starting on Monday to see how we can now further elaborate the specific framework and modalities to work this out, make it happen in the different regions, and give some guidance to the regions on how to do this.
So we hope to come to you with more specific, more concrete proposals in the near future. And of course in the end it will be your job to make it happen. So we will only give guidance and general frameworks, but then it’s up to you to do it and to come back with results. I hope that we will have the opportunity at the next round of Monitoring Committees to discuss this and to see if we have other good examples that we could take further and transfer to other regions, and try to make them work even better in the future. For me, this was the essential lesson of today.
Mr.R.SHOTTON: Thank you.
We are in the business of building regional intelligence, of course, and not just regional infrastructure. And we have to clear away the alibis. We can't do it in Greece because of the legal situation, because of the administrative situation. We can't do it in Greece because Greece is different. We can't do it
118 “MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS” 6/12/2001 in Greece because the private sector doesn’t want to cooperate. We can't do it because, because…
I think we have seen that people can do it, that they are doing it. And while we can always, as Nikos Papadodimas said, always try to improve the machine, and it does need improvement – the Commission machine, the Structural Fund machine, they all need improvement -, nevertheless there is nothing to stop us doing it now, and it is an important focus for the next five years.
So thank you very much. Thank you especially to the speakers who have travelled here, sometimes with considerable difficulty, and I hope they will travel back with less difficulty. And for those of you who are here tomorrow, we’ll see you again tomorrow. Τhank you.
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