RESOLUTION A3-0253/92

Resolution on a Community policy for regional planning: Europe 2000

The European Parliament,

-having regard to Articles 130a - 130e of the EEC Treaty,

-having regard to Article 10 of Council Regulation (EEC) No. 4254/88 concerning the ERDFOJ No. L 374, 31.12.1988, p. 15,

-having regard to the reports and final declaration of the first Conference of the Regions of January 1984 (PE 87.632),

-having regard to the 4th periodical report on the social and economic situation and development of the regions of the Community (COM(90)0609),

-having regard to the Commission communication entitled 'Europe 2000, an outlook for the development of the Community's territory' (COM(91)0452),

-having regard to its resolutions of 15 December 1983 on a European regional planning schemeOJ No. C 10, 16.1.1984, p. 115 and of 26 October 1990 on a concerted regional planning policyOJ No. C 295, 26.11.1990, p. 652,

-having regard to the motion for a resolution by Mr Bettini and others on environmental degradation in Sardinia (B3-1075/91),

-having regard to the resolution of 9 June 1992 on cross-border and interregional cooperationMinutes of that sitting, Part II, Item 5,

-having regard to the resolution on a Community policy for regional planning and management to ensure harmonious development while protecting the environment adopted at the Second Conference of the European Parliament and the Regions of the Community, and the opinion submitted by the Consultative Council of Regional and Local Authorities for that Conference,

-having regard to the Commission's Green Paper on the urban environment (COM(90)0218), and the resolutions by the CouncilOJ No. C 33, 8.2.1991, p. 4 and the European ParliamentOJ No. C 267, 14.10.1991, p. 156 on this subject,

-having regard to the report by the Committee on Regional Policy, Regional Planning and Relations with Regional and Local Authorities and the opinions of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs and Industrial Policy, the Committee on Energy, Research and Technology, the Committee on Transport and Tourism, the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Protection and the Committee on Culture, Youth, Education and the Media (A3-0253/92),

A.having regard to the preliminary work done by the Council of Europe in the area of regional planning,

1.Stresses that, in order to ensure harmonious development while protecting the environment in the Community, a legal basis should be created enabling the Community in future to coordinate a pan-European approach to development which takes account of an expanded economic area and subsequent enlargement;

2.Considers therefore that, as it progresses towards EMU and political union, the Community must increasingly assume joint responsibility for regional planning in the twelve Member States; considers moreover that in doing so it must comply with the principle of subsidiarity and be guided by the political will of the local authorities, the regions and the Member States and respect their social and cultural autonomy at all levels;

3.Is concerned at the growing geographical imbalances which are particularly reflected in an alarming increase in the size of cities and the gradual disappearance of the countryside;

4.Stresses that the continuation of the uncoordinated policies now being pursued in this area will lead to further uncontrolled urban growth and the destruction of the countryside, the environment and Europe's architectural and cultural heritage;

5.Calls for a policy to be adopted at regional, national and Community level comprising legislative measures that will guarantee for the future the environmentally acceptable use of limited resources such as soil, air, water, energy and capital which also take into account the precautionary principle;

6.Further recommends that an environmental impact study be carried out as a matter of principle in future before the adoption of Community policy measures;

7.Calls for further legislative measures to strengthen the principle of partnership between the various administrative and political bodies (local authorities, the regions, the Member States' governments and the Commission);

8.Welcomes the establishment of the 'Committee of Regions' as proposed in the Treaty on European Union, which should be consulted on all relevant matters concerning the implementation of the principle of subsidiarity;

9.Recommends that, in future, links and mutual cooperation should also be established and strengthened in the field of regional planning and management between regional and national parliaments and the European Parliament, in particular between their respective specialized committees; to this end, reiterates the need to develop cross-border cooperation and calls on the Member States, in accordance with the recommendation of the Standing Conference of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe, to recognize the legal validity of the measures taken by cross-border cooperation bodies in matters of common interest which fall within their respective spheres of competence;

10.Stresses that European regional planning policy must be based on detailed and forward-looking assessment of relevant data, including the basic geographical data derived from remote sensing, together with data on population growth, new local factors, industry and services, development of urban, rural and border areas, energy, telecommunications, transport networks, tourism, research and development, education and occupational training, leisure, resources, environmental management and protection, culture, health and social activity in the regions and in neighbouring third countries;

11.Stresses that the Commission must in future take account of cultural aspects in its European regional planning policy;

12.Calls on the Commission, with reference to Article 10 of the Regional Funds Regulation, on the basis of this data and after consultation with the Community's regions, to develop objectives which private investors can use as a frame of reference for their long-term planning and decisions, and to forward these to the European Parliament for its opinion;

13.Acknowledges the work already done by the Commission (Europe 2000) and urges it to commission further studies without delay with the aim of assessing quantitatively and qualitatively future influences on the use of Community territory, not forgetting the island areas of the Community, because of their special characteristics;

14.Calls on the Commission, the Member States and the regions to strive for better coordination of the policies of the many national and regional ministries (economic, transport, finance, environment, industry, education and culture etc.) responsible for this area, as well as of the relevant Commission Directorates-General;

15.Urges the Commission and the Council to introduce the spatial planning dimension into the future modification of the Structural Funds;

16.Believes that it is essential to promote the notion of sustainable development linked to the concept of the limit value of resources and, accordingly, to determine the criteria for evaluating policies incorporating environmental, social, cultural, educational and public health considerations;

17.Recommends that the Commission make preparations for the establishment of a European monitoring and information centre for regional planning linked to the European Environment Agency, involving all the Member States and European countries outside the Community, the remit of which would be to evaluate the regional efficacy and impact on the environment, both natural and cultural, of regional, national and Community policies, to advise regional authorities on the use of land and ground, and to prepare and update a European regional atlas giving information about all relevant areas including demographic development, degree of damage to the environment, income, tax, education, etc.;

18. In this context welcomes the initiatives to establish a compendium of regional planning systems and policies in the Member States and to create a network of research institutes on spatial planning;

19.Expects that, pursuant to Articles 92-94 of the EEC Treaty, surveillance designed to detect abuses in the allocation of state aid will be intensified in order to counteract the concentration of economic activity in prosperous regions; insists that checks must be carried out not only on direct state aid, as in the past, but also on indirect aid in the form of tax and interest advantages and local grants, which also distort competition and thus work against the interests of less-favoured regions; argues that this would considerably increase the impact of the regional policy instrument of investment promotion in structurally weak areas;

20.Declares that the subsidiarity principle must be applied in the Community in the area of regional planning in particular and refers to the 'counter-current principle' applied in some Member States, which sees regional planning as the joint responsibility of local, regional and national authorities and provides for a legally regulated procedure to reach consensus while maintaining enough planning freedom for local authorities and regions;

21.Stresses that a successful regional planning policy must have the democratic involvement of local authorities and regions and calls, therefore, on the governments of those Member States which still have centralized systems to create the legal conditions for the establishment of regional authorities endowed with the necessary powers;

22.Hopes, in particular, that:

-environmental education will begin at primary school;

-specific university and vocational training will be furthered in a way appropriate to the needs and prospects of regional employment market;

-public transport infrastructures, especially those of a non-polluting nature, will be given preference over the private car;

-in view of the expected negative effects of the completed internal market on women in particular, equal treatment for men and women with respect to training capacity and job creation will be guaranteed;

-the island regions, owing to their special characteristics, namely their smallness, isolated location, distance from major centres in the Community, lack of resources and the high cost of factors of production, will receive from the Community appropriate treatment;

-a link will be established between regional policy and research policy (e.g. trans-European telecommunications networks with the same specifications in order to create a European market for terminals of the same standard as a means of strengthening the position of European firms in other regions);

-a widespread information campaign will be carried out by the Member States in collaboration with the Commission to make the citizens of the Community aware of the importance of a coherent regional planning policy;

23.Points to the as yet unexploited potential of rural areas in promoting small and medium-sized undertakings, particularly in the area of further processing of the products of agriculture, forestry and fish-farming, in developing forms of tourism that show consideration for the environment, people and their cultures, and attracting non-site-bound service industries, and stresses in this connection the essential role of small and medium-sized towns;

24.Supports the Commission in its concern to plug existing gaps by means of trans-European networks, particularly in telecommunications and energy, which are not included in the Cohesion Fund set up in Maastricht;

25.Points to the role of large transport infrastructures in the development of the European area; stresses the need to strengthen connections between the west and east of the Community;

26.Underlines in this respect the necessity for providing educational and training structures in rural island regions and remote islands to counteract the migration of young and skilled people away from these areas/regions;

27.Warns against seeing large cities and industrial conurbations in an exclusively negative light and calls instead for an optimal balance between the obvious advantages and disadvantages of population concentration and its exploitation to guarantee the Community's economic basis and also the protection of the countryside and the environment; in view of the growing problems in inner cities and suburbs, it is important to set up a specific fund to deal with the problems of urban centres;

28.Points out in this connection that urban structures permit a relatively low use of land per inhabitant for living, working and transport purposes and of environmentally sound energy and heat supply through networks, and favour the use of local and long-distance rail transport; is nevertheless aware that in general the quality of life in conurbations diminishes in inverse proportion as population density rises;

29.Asks the relevant authorities to promote those measures which could establish multipurpose towns, providing education, employment services and accommodation;

30.Considers therefore that heavily populated areas must be the subject of planning, with particular attention being paid to the problems of noise, air pollution, waste, effluents, drinking water supplies and the rational use of energy;

31.Considers that demonstration projects in the energy field - particularly in the promotion of renewable energies in the less favoured regions - must be one of the priorities of regional development measures for the 1993-1997 period;

32.Takes the view therefore that a structured hierarchy of large, medium-sized and small development centres offers the best chance of preventing an excessive concentration of people and economic power in a few capital cities and other conurbations, while at the same time using the advantages of moderate urban concentration to develop structurally weak areas;

33.Stresses that regional planning aimed at securing balanced regional development must also take account of social problems arising on the one hand from the excessive concentration in metropolitan areas of a socially disadvantaged population and ethnic minorities, together with growing immigration from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean countries and, on the other, from a decline in rural and structurally weak areas;

34.Stresses that the Community policy for regional planning, which aims to achieve harmonious development of the regions, must be supported by funding which attaches priority to the internal development of the regions;

35.Stresses in this connection the significance of regional planning as an instrument for maintaining social harmony within the Community;

36.Is aware that the completion of the internal market can have positive effects on economic development, but stresses that the new-found prosperity might not be shared equally among the regions of Europe, and welcomes therefore the establishment of the Cohesion Fund as proposed at Maastricht which, together with a larger share of the structural funds for Objective 1 regions, is directed towards alleviating the negative aspects of further economic and monetary integration;

37.Stresses that a Community industrial policy whose objective is to promote competitiveness and convergence demands a global strategy in which the regional dimension is given its full importance, and that Europe 2000, as a new initiative in the field of regional planning, opens the way to such a strategy;

38.Supports the Commission's view that information and consultation procedures be strengthened or where necessary set up, centred on the following seven topics:

(a)geographical location, distribution and diversification of economic activity,

(b)demographic changes and immigration,

(c)economic imbalances and connected transport patterns,

(d)information technology and telecommunication networks and services,

(e)environmental policies,

(f)energy policy,

(g)local, regional, national and European planning and cooperation,

all of which have an important impact on the Community's spatial use;

39.Considers that the informal meetings of ministers responsible for regional planning and regional policy and the decision to establish an informal Committee on Spatial Development by the Commission are useful steps towards closer consultation and cooperation;

40. Stresses, however, in view of the emphasis attributed to economic and social cohesion, most recently in the Maastricht Treaty, and of the considerable resources proposed for regional development that it is essential to convene formal and regular meetings of the Council in the fields of regional planning and regional policies;

41.Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Commission, the Council, the Governments and Parliaments of the Member States, the Intergovernmental Conferences and the Council of Europe.