ACTIVITIES / DOCUMENTS > External cooperation

The issues

• The issues
• CPMR action
• Working documents

Given the global nature of the economy, the CPMR believes that it is impossible to limit our analysis to Europe.
The rest of the world has to be taken into account.

European regions are becoming increasingly active on the international stage, with a view to:

• cultivating historical links or nurturing neighbourhood relations.
• carrying out work to support development targeted at developing countries, territories and regions. These actions may either be led directly by the regional authorities themselves or backed by them through funding provided to NGOs or donors present in the territories concerned.
• developing international strategies and generating new rules of governance. The regions must protect themselves against the uneven impact of globalisation on their inhabitants and territories. These strategies are helping them to carve out a new role.
• trying to find solutions to the global problems which affect them.

Links are being cultivated with regions from :

• neighbouring countries, in the south (the southern and eastern shores of the Mediterranean) and eastern continental Europe (Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan).
• other countries and other continents, especially regions and local authorities from so-called developing or ‘emerging’ countries.

Further afield, interregional ties are being formalised more widely within FOGAR, the ‘Forum of Global Associations of Regions’, the first worldwide organisation of regional networks from the five continents set up on the initiative of the CPMR at the International Convention for a Territorial Approach to Development, held in Marseille on 5-7 March 2007.

The CPMR is working :

• to ensure that these regional activities are included in relevant EU programmes when appropriate. This concerns the ‘regional’ strand of neighbourhood policy, participation of the Regions in decentralised development cooperation policies and projects run by the European Commission, or indeed the participation of regional authorities in programmes targeted at cooperation between European regional governments and regional and local authorities from Latin America or Asia (URB-AL and ASIA-URBS).
• to express the opinions of the regions on the European international stage, in their respective areas of competence.
• to structure the voice of regions throughout the world so that they may be heard and acknowledged within the circles of a new global governance system to be established with the United Nations.