Archimedes launched

Archimedes (so-called from the initials of its full name – Actions to Regenerate Cities and Help Innovative Mediterranean Economic Development Enhancing Sustainability) is one of nine projects taking place in the framework of the MED-PACT regional programme which is dedicated to cooperation among local authorities on the Southern and Northern shores of the Mediterranean. Its specific objectives are to assist the EU’s Mediterranean partner countries to ensure a more balanced and durable local development, via partnerships between cities and to promote better municipal planning and management.

The MED-PACT programme falls within the framework of the Barcelona Process which aims at promoting prosperity, democracy, stability and security in the Mediterranean basin. MED-PACT is a partnership programme between local authorities in the Mediterranean with a BUDGET of €5 million. Start Date: 2006 Duration: 3 years.

The MED-PACT programme meets a Committee of the Regions request in a 2003 Opinion for the need to support cooperation between local authorities within the Euro-Mediterranean partnership. It also meets one of the main recommendations of the Naples December 2003 Foreign Affairs Ministerial Conference of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership which called for the promotion of civil society partnerships in the region to give greater substance to the Barcelona Process.

The main objective of the programme is to encourage better understanding between civil society in the north and the south of the Mediterranean by developing cooperation, exchanges and dialogue between cities.

The specific objectives are:

• to assist the EU’s Mediterranean partner countries to ensure a more balanced and durable local development, via partnerships between cities
• to promote better municipal planning and management, involving all the city’s actors as necessary

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Committee of the Regions supports strengthening of ENP

Istvan Sertö-Radics, 1st Vice-President of the Committee of the Regions (CoR) Commission for External Relations, presented the CoR's political strategy related to European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) during the high-level conference held in Brussels on 3 September.

He told the Conference that the CoR contributes to the implementation and assessment of a variety of new neighbourhood policy instruments and programmes, particularly in the field of cross-border and interregional cooperation, along with institution-building programmes, which are of particular importance for local and regional authorities.

During the conference workshop on governance and stability, Lucio Gussetti, Director of the CoR Directorate for Consultative Works, said that the CoR had proposed setting up a forum of local and regional authorities of the Euromed region, as well as engaging in local and regional election monitoring in ENP countries.

The representative voice of regions and cities in the EU, the CoR believes that cooperation at local and regional level across of Europe is a major pre-requisite for political stability, sustainable growth and protection of the environment in the neighbourhood area.