A vélemény adatlapja 

THE COMMITTEE OF THE REGIONS



 strongly insists that sufficient funding be allocated to the further development of the EU's Integrated Maritime Policy (IMP) until the end of the present Financial Perspective in 2013. Is also of the view that specific and adequate funding needs to be allocated for the development and further strengthening of IMP in the next budgetary period commencing 2014, and calls upon all parties involved in the drawing up of the EU budget to devote adequate attention to this need. This is vital in order to achieve the goals that have been set and not to allow all the progress and investments already made to be in vain;

 insists that greater emphasis be placed on the "sustainable economic growth, employment and innovation" priority. As Europe is still struggling to overcome the most severe economic crisis in living memory, actions to this end surely deserve more attention, not to mention the fact that they could significantly contribute to the achievement of the goals of the Europe 2020 programme;

 points to the need to keep earmarking EU funding for the integrated maritime policy after 2014 so as to sustain the policy and make it effective, subject to discussion of the multiannual financial framework post-2013. The coastal fund discussed by the Committee of the Regions and the European Parliament could be an example here;

 demands that local and regional authorities be consulted when developing and implementing actions aimed at achieving the objective of improving the quality of public decision-making at all levels. The CoR has already called for governance in this field to be carried out in the spirit of multilevel governance and in compliance with subsidiarity, and also calls for greater involvement and cooperation with non-EU countries on matters of marine knowledge. The importance of improving coordination with these partners on other aspects of maritime policy has already been widely acknowledged and the benefits of more common actions in this field are quite obvious.