WORKSHOP ON THE MECHANISMS FOR THE IMPLEMENTATION …€¦ · 2 PROGRAMME - Greeting by Mr. Christos Pachtas, Deputy Minister of National Economy. - Presentation of the objectives

EUROPEAN COMMISSION

WORKSHOP

ON THE �MECHANISMS FOR THE IMPLEMENTATION OFREGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS�

Athens, Greece - 6 DECEMBER 2001

�MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIONS� 6/12/2001

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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 localdevelopment actions for the 2000 -2006 CSF � CSF Managing Authority.- The Contrats de Plan État-Region in France: an experience of negotiationsbetween levels of governance. Michel Lacave, Professor at the University ofMontpellier 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. MaribelLorenzo Borahona, Expert, Bidasoa Activa, Head of the Finance, Design andInnovation 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 localemployment initiatives in Magnesia Prefecture � P. Skotiniotis, Prefect ofMagnesia.- DiscussionSESSION 2: �Innovation and the Information Society in the Regions�

Chairperson: G. Papakonstantinou, Special Secretary, Ministry of NationalEconomy

- Presentation of experience/best practice in the joint action between Finlandand Sweden in the RIS Northern EU project � Mr. Jukka Teras, Expert, OuluTechnopolis, 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 theIT Institute at the Foundation for Technology and Research.- Discussion

SESSION 3: �Integrated Actions for the Development of Urban andMountainous Regions�

Chairperson: Mr. D. Psaltopoulos, Professor of Agricultural Development atthe University of Patras.

- Presentation of experience/best practice from the mountainous areas of thePiemonte region in Italy � Ms. Elena di Bella, Expert, Department ofAgriculture and Rural Development, Torino, Italy.- Presentation of experience/best practice for urban development action inEngland � 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, ROPfor 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 beeninvited for two days by the European Structural Funds and we would like toask 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 younamed Nikos or Niki. We have not made you come here in order to spendyour day celebrating your name day in the Caravel, but there was no otherdate 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 andhe 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 ourmeeting.

Mr.Κ.THEOS: Ladies and gentlemen, dear friends, the Vice Minister ofNational Economy Mr. Pachtas asked me to present a welcome address forthis workshop organised by the European Commission. He had previousengagements in northern Greece and he couldn�t be present here today. Heapologizes and he asked me to convey to you his wishes for every successduring this workshop. He will be closely following the conclusions of thisworkshop. So, ladies and gentlemen I will only say a few words on the generalframework of today�s event. First of all, I would like to thank the EuropeanCommission for the initiative and mainly Mr. Shotton and Mrs. Verstraete, forthe initiative of organising this conference. I would like to thank themparticularly for the content of this workshop, because the content of theworkshop reflects the needs within the framework of the OperationalProgrammes of the third CSF.

It is true that during the last months we have made a lot of effort inorder to promote the new generation of the third CSF OperationalProgrammes. We have given a lot of time to adapting to new procedures andnew regulations and we often did not give enough time to the substance of theprogrammes themselves. Therefore it is a very interesting experience todaybecause 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


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development projects and actions, local employment initiatives andinnovations, information society and the regions, as well as integrated actions,are all interlinked because these are all actions concerning the civil societyand its needs.

I will mention the general framework guiding these actions. As you verywell know, Greece is going through a period of dynamic growth and will enterthe Economic and Monetary Union in January. We have growth rates amongthe highest in Europe, we have forecasts which are very favourable for thecoming years, and the prospect of macroeconomic development. If we addto that the third Community Support Framework, along with the Communityinitiatives and the Cohesion Fund, all of which make up a developmentpackage of EUR 50 billion, and if we add on top of that the momentumsupplied by the Olympic Games being organised in Greece, we can imaginea positive, very positive impact on Greece.

What is very interesting is that all these positive elements will also beaddressed from the viewpoint of quality during these two days of workshops.These features are features where there are still some shortcomings for ourcountry. We have had a brief democratic life period in Greece, only twenty-fiveyears, that is. Some years ago we didn�t have regions. Some years ago wedidn�t have second-tier elected local authorities and a very few years ago allthese institutions had only minimal competencies. The central state is trying todecentralise and it is gradually decentralising in the regions and in localauthorities. Regional administration therefore is a continuous worksite, I wouldsay, and there are constant works in progress. There has been the unificationof municipalities and communes under the institutional framework called theKapodistrias Law. And I think that the main problem of our country is that wedon�t have a tradition of establishing such institutions.

This is why today�s workshop will be of particular interest. In othermember states there have been institutions in place for many years, for manydecades. 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 centraladministration. This has not taken place in Greece and this has often beenreflected in local activities. This workshop is also very important in view of thecontinuation of Cohesion Fund policies after 2006 and in view of the


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discussions in all the European Union institutions on the modern models ofgovernance.

I think that our country has made very important progress in recentyears. I don�t mean by that that there is nothing to be done. There is a lot tobe done. These are new institutions, which are now acquiring newcompetencies and are negociating the path towards acknowledgement. Allcontributing factors, that is both central government and local authorities, mustrealise that each one of us at our own level must make the state more friendlyfor the citizen, must bring it closer to the citizen.

The interface between the state and the citizen will always take placeat a local level and at a constantly more local level. The municipalities arecalled upon to become beacons for the mobilisation of local resources,economic or productive resources. Some cases of dysfunction noticedpreviously at the level of central government are now also noticed at the levelof local authorities, the regional first or second-level local authorities. In lastyear�s report by the Ombudsman I think that we all noticed some commentson that. Our regional structure, that is, regional, prefectural, departmentalauthorities and local authorities, are the levels of this infrastructure whichneed to be developed and today�s workshop will help us realize how theselocal institutions, those institutions that are close to subsidiarity, will help usimprove our position within the future of the European Union.

Information, integrated actions and local initiatives are of crucialimportance because they will all give the new features that this model needsfor the third CSF, because it is this new model that we have adopted for thethird CSF. It is also of crucial importance for the adaptation of our country tothe new situation for the years after 2006, that is when the situation will bedifferent for all of us. Priorities will be different at the European Union leveland we hope that our regions will not be new Objective 1 regions. Some ofthem, we hope, will be Objective 2 regions, that is we will have achievedconvergence to such an extent that we will have avoided Objective 1, which isbelow 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 theEuropean Commission once again. Thank you for your initiative; it is very


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important for us. In a meeting a couple of weeks ago we agreed with theEuropean Commission that there will be another meeting in January which willbe more targeted on integrated regional development actions for urban andmountain regions. This is a Commission initiative for the month of January tocome. 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 theCommission; both Lea Verstraete and I welcome you. She will say a fewwords of introduction after me. I would also like to begin this short introductionby thanking too the Greek Authorities for their support in organising this event.

We have today speakers from Greece and speakers from regionselsewhere in the Union. This will be an illustration once again that local andregional initiative is a reality in Greece and an impressive one, as it iselsewhere in the Union. But to see that local initiatives and regional initiativesexist and deserve recognition is not really the focus of this meeting. The focusis not really, as you have understood, on what to do but on how to do it. Andso we are looking through the prism of some individual case studies to lookmore at how they have organised themselves to carry out the actions that theyhave decided upon. But the first message, nevertheless, that I think all of usshould take away, is that there are a lot of regional and local initiatives goingon in Greece. It�s perfectly possible within the existing administrative and legalframework in Greece, within the existing organisation of government; we don�tneed 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, fromexamples in Greece and from other countries, that it might be possible toexpand our ambition by organising more intelligently the partnership betweenlocal and regional people and national administrations so that we canincrease the developmental effect of local and regional initiatives. Thispartnership, of course, can have a number of levels of ambition. It can bequite simply a dialogue and exchange of information, an awareness of whateach is doing and a willingness to seek a certain complementarity betweenlocal and regional action and national action. There can also beencouragement and support from the national level in quite simple ways, notnecessarily financial ways, by recognition of the importance of what is beingdone at local and regional level. And we will hear an example from anothermember state of the type of recognition which national government gives to


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local and regional initiative. But it is possible, of course, to imagine goingfurther and to agree jointly a package of actions, some of which are financedlocally and regionally, some of which are financed nationally, and whichtogether create a critical mass of financing which can have a much biggerleverage than individual initiatives.

We can go further too, in the sense that beyond talking about individualprojects we can talk about strategy between the local and regional levels andthe national level and there are examples of that, for example in informationsociety applications where there is a dialogue starting about strategy as wellas individual projects. And of course at the top of the tree perhaps, we have asituation that you will hear about in France for example where there iscontractual commitment between regional partners and national partners on amultiannual basis to carry out an agreed programme of work, which is, ofcourse, a much more sophisticated approach than is presently the reality inGreece. So there is nothing bad about working back-to-back as it werebetween the regional level and the national level, each doing their ownprojects. But it would be better to work hand-in-hand, and one of the purposesof this workshop is to examine whether we can make progress in this directionwithin the existing legal and administrative framework.

Mr. Theos has already said, and I would like to say it again, that wehave five years ahead of us to prepare for another world after enlargementwhen very probably a large part of Greek territory will no longer be eligible forObjective 1. And we all hope that, because that is a sign of success. But thatmeans that the types of structural actions that we will be funding in Greece willvery likely be completely different from the types of actions that we are familiarwith today. They will be much more orientated towards the kind of actions thatyou see in the URBAN initiative, the kind of actions that you see in theinnovation projects, the kind of actions that you are developing in theintegrated rural programmes. These will be the mechanisms for the delivery ofdevelopment in all probability in Greece beyond 2006. And we have to buildthe capability in the coming years to deliver this kind of policy in Greece.

You will hear examples today from countries which have differentrealities from yours, where medium-sized cities of 100-200,000 people havetheir own strategy of economic development, their own strategies for socialinclusion, 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 givereal effect to them. This reality, of course, is not Greece�s reality today but itmay be possible to examine whether, in addition to preparing the mechanismswithin the existing structures, it may be possible to start a discussion aboutanother institutional and legal reality in Greece in four or five years� time. Thishorizon may seem far away to us today but it is tomorrow in terms ofadministrative reform, as you all know.

We want to encourage a debate from the floor today so we have triedto limit the number of speakers, although we have quite a few, but we haveasked them to be short, and I will be short too. And we want you to join in thedebate. We encourage you very much to do that. So please participate afterthe introductions and we will try to get as stimulating and as interesting adiscussion 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, andnot just presentations.

I think it is commonly agreed that local governments and local agenciesare becoming key partners in delivering economic development acrossEurope. There is also a political consensus to strengthening the localdimension of the European Employment Strategy through the elaboration oflocal action plans, and I hope this will be one of the major points fordiscussion today: how to establish and how to implement local action plans.This is based on the consideration that the success of employment policiesmainly depends on the mobilisation of local people, and there is now a needto shift from individual local development initiatives, which have their ownmerit and which are a necessity, to more integrated, coherent, localapproaches and local strategies. Now, the current Structural Funds regulationprovides considerable potential for the development of these local initiativesthrough the regional programmes, in Greece, for instance, for the period2000-2006. However, a local strategy for employment and for development isnot just about spending. We really should focus on how to achieve a commoneffort, how to achieve a common thinking, how to achieve innovation andcoordination of effort. In essence, it�s not about more spending but aboutbetter spending and creating better and stronger partnerships.


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We therefore strongly encourage local and regional authorities todevelop strategies for employment through local action plans for employmentand for social inclusion, and to promote the appropriate partnershiparrangements between all the people involved. Local development and thelocal dimension of the European Employment Strategy, through theestablishment of local action plans, can help us to build together a platform formore effective and sustainable development at the local level, to create moreand better jobs. That is the essence of what this workshop is about, toconnect you, as regional and local authorities, as regional and local decision-makers and managers, and also to connect the national and Europeanstrategies to what is done at regional and local level.

Our aim today is not to advocate the importance of the local level ofdevelopment. We are here to do more than that. We should examine how wecan make this happen, how we can use the existing mechanisms to make ithappen, how we can build on what exists, because it is obvious that we arenot starting from scratch. A lot has been done in the past. Examples can begiven of successful implementation through the Territorial Employment Pacts.Others have been less successful, but still it is important to build on thestrengths and weaknesses of previous experiences and to try to learn fromthem and to continue the work that has been done. Of course, at the sametime we must look at better ways to make it happen and try to adapt themechanisms for future development. It is essential that at the end of the daywe can say that we have used this meeting and the expertise that is gatheredhere to make full use of the conclusions of this meeting. This is really theagenda.

Let me now put some questions to you that we should perhaps try toaddress today.

How can we best define and highlight the roles and responsibilitiesbetween and across levels, that is, between local authorities in a partnershipagreement as well as between local, regional and national authorities?

What is there to be done now to fully exploit the existing institutionalframework and mechanisms in the short run, to be able to implement localdevelopment actions and local employment as soon as 2002, so that we canachieve the challenges that have been put in the third CSF, and how can weimprove this later on?


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How can national authorities better involve regional and local peopleand local authorities in the development and implementation of the NationalAction Plans for employment and for social inclusion?

How can all people in the regions, at the local level, work together, andhow can they be mobilised, how can we pull together these people and publicemployment services, with training providers, with enterprises, with the socialpartners? How can we also ensure that organisations are involved, peopleare involved, that take into account the necessity for equal opportunities inthese actions?

Finally, how can good practice be identified, validated and transferred?Because there is good practice, so we need to make it known to everybodyand to see how it can be transferred to others.

It is clear that there is a huge diversity of approaches to local action, asthere are diverse employment and labour market situations and institutionalcontexts in Europe. There is also a clear European trend towards localdevelopment. We should now examine how this trend can be adapted to thecontext of the Greek labour market and how we can also make it happen inGreece. This is really what we should discuss today, and I hope to work onthese subjects with you during the day to come, so that we can establishclear conclusions that will make our work more concrete and more successfulin the future. Thank you very much.

Mr.R.SHOTTON: I would like to invite the steering committee to introduce theManaging Authority of the Community Support Framework.

MR. N. KOMNINIDIS: Thank you, Mr. Shotton. I�d like to thank Mr. Kolyvas onbehalf of all people named Nikos in this room. I think that all the peoplenamed Nicolas here realise the seriousness of these issues and theinnovative nature of these issues. So it is very important for us, and this iswhy we are working today although it is a name-day for Nicolas.

The Managing Authorities of all the regional programmes are, at thistime of the year, planning the implementation of these activities, so it is a very,very timely moment. In the Programme Complements, we have defined thegeneral procedures on the basis of which we will implement these actions inour regional programmes. However, the difficulties start only today, because itis a different thing to theoretically plan something, and to put into practice


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these actions, which are quite innovative. Of course, planning dates back along time. On the one hand, there was the regional development plan, wherethe notion of innovation was included as of the analysis stage. Innovation wasclearly present in the strategic choices. On the other hand, there is theEuropean Union; the indicative guidelines for the development of Objective 1regions pertain to all these issues, that is, innovation and local employmentinitiatives, which date back to the second CSF, when the Local TerritorialPacts existed at an experimental stage. Now some conclusions have beendrawn and some of the initiatives in these Local Territorial Pacts have beensimplified. As regards the integrated urban development and ruraldevelopment actions, the emphasis is on mainstreaming the actions of theURBAN and LEADER initiatives. So there are some converging directionsthat show an interest in these issues, which is necessary at the level of localdevelopment. These actions are included in the overall plan of every RegionalOperational Programme. There is no homogeneity between the 13 RegionalOperational Programmes, but we know that a Regional OperationalProgramme consists of various initiatives.

First of all an initiative of regional networks, infrastructures andproductive processes, where we have measures linked to innovation, that is,issues pertaining to the major development guidelines for each region. Thereis a second initiative on actions in the urban space in general � buildings,environment, social infrastructure, human resources and actions generallyincluding the integrated URBAN actions. Thirdly, there is an initiative on ruraldevelopment, including the integrated actions for the development ofmountainous and remote areas. These are the three priorities in the RegionalOperational Programmes. There is a fourth one, depending on the particularityof each Regional Operational Programme, for instance the environment, ortourism, or human resources. However, quite often human resources issuesare included in the above initiatives, and a great effort is required to puttogether the interventions of the various Funds in order to maximise the resultwith the integrated actions.

For each one of these categories of actions there are estimates in theprogramme complements as regards the implementation mechanisms; forlocal development initiatives these actions are now being planned. At thebeginning of the third CSF the directions were not very clear as regards thelocal 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, whichallows us to have in hand now, enough material to put together these actionson the local level. Of course, all this will be developed later on in greaterdetail.

As regards the local employment initiatives, I will not mention theobjectives because we know them. In order to successfully implement theseactions, we need to have four categories of action. First of all, updatinginformation on the local agencies, the social partners, the local businesses,and the activities of all these people. Secondly, we need to define theorganisational scheme of these local employment initiatives. Thirdly, we needto identify the basic features of the categories of actions, of the populationgroups, of the target populations in the local community, in order to define thepossibilities and skills of the population. And fourthly, we need to connect, tohave a synergy of the actions, with the respective axes of the OperationalProgramme, where possible, in order to achieve and maintain the greatestemployability.

The Ministry of Labour, in collaboration with the regions, is trying toform a more specific and more concrete framework for the implementation ofthese general principles. On Monday there will be a meeting on this, and wehope that this will be the start of implementation in two directions, either inURBAN integrated actions or in other forms of action on the local level.

The second category of actions is innovative actions, especially in thefield of development, that is the productive sector. But in the broad sense, wecan have innovative actions in the agricultural sector or in the sector ofservices, tourism, etc. We don�t need necessarily to have a technologicalindustrial action, given that many of our regions have an agriculturalcharacter.

However, as a rule, the Regional Programmes on the innovation issueinclude actions for the creation of infrastructures for hosting and developinginnovative actions, including support of research and development in researchinstitutes and centres, support of synergy and networking between researchcentres and enterprises, support of technological innovation, which is usingthe sector of electronics, IT, multimedia, etc., and finally support of theinformation society as a whole. Especially for the information society, as we


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will have the opportunity to see later on, we have already developed somebusiness plans for the participation of the regions in the information society.

As regards the implementation of these actions, the main stages for theimplementation of this strategy are the following: First of all, ensuring socialconsensus. We all know from experience how cautious we should be inremote areas. We need to analyse regional technological trends and todetermine the demand for innovative actions. Secondly, we need to make anassessment of the supply of innovative services and actions, whichsometimes presents a deficit. Thirdly, we need to define a framework foraction. We need to define the strategic goals, the thematic fields of action,sectoral areas, and to link goals and actions. Fourthly, we need to carefullydefine the funding procedure, because we have actions in both the public andthe private sector. Fifthly, we need to have a monitoring mechanism andpublicity, 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 fortender by the managing authority of the Operational Programme on the basisof the various categories of criteria that we have in the programmecomplements, as well as the specifications published by the MonitoringCommittee, and there are social, economic and environmental criteria.Therefore we ask the local authorities to submit an offer in the form of a draftOperational Programme for financing a group of actions which will constitutean integrated approach and which will include: the current situation, thefeatures of the area, the main scopes of intervention, the actions andinitiatives proposed to be funded, the anticipated impact on the area, and ofcourse the agency that will implement this proposal.

On the basis of these initial business plans, the managing authoritymakes an evaluation of the proposals and makes a report to the managingauthority of the Regional Operational Programme. It is a rather openprocedure, where the local agencies must know as of the beginning that thereare certain criteria, which are mainly social, while there is also a prospect fordevelopment, that is, we are not only talking about social criteria. We need tohave areas where economic activity can develop in one form or another. Thefinal selection is made on the basis of the criteria and on the basis of thespecifications. Then we go on to the second stage, that is, the elaboration of


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the detailed business plan, with the submission of technical sheets, etc., etc.So in order to implement these measures, the final beneficiaries will submitdetailed proposals on the basis of receiving some technical support from theregions and the various agencies.

As regards more specifically the rural sector, the issues of governanceon 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 underprivilegedareas, we know that there are similar actions in the national sectoralprogramme on agriculture. There is a corresponding part in each region to theextent of approximately four per cent of each Regional OperationalProgramme, devoted to integrated actions mainly in the mountainous areas.Plains can also be included, where the agricultural activity demandsrestructuring, as well as remote insular areas.

So the criteria for mountainous zones are similar. In order to try to bebrief I will not go into depth here. I think we will have the opportunity todiscuss them a bit later on. Thank you for your attention.

Mr.R.SHOTTON: Thank you very much, Mr. Komninidis. Now I�d like to inviteProfessor Lacave to present the French experience. As you know, there aresome parallels between the organisation of the Greek administration and theorganisation 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 andgentlemen. I am just waiting for the technical aspects to be solved, so whilstwaiting, here are some short introductory words. My presentation will deal withpolitical and institutional engineering, and I will try to provide you with abalanced approach to this experience, not neglecting what can be reasonablycriticised in this experience.

I will present a case study of what we call in France contractualrelations between the state and the regions, which is an experience and not amodel. And I say that because, as you will see later on, I will have somecriticisms of the system. As you probably know, France is traditionallycentralised, and has been a heavily centralised country, with a very large role


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assigned to Préfets, assisted by what we now call Secrétaires Généraux àl�Action Régionale, in the regions, which are in charge of regional planningand, at the same time, of regional development and management of EUStructural Funds. However, in �82-�83 there were a set of decentralisationlaws, with three objectives. The first was to enlarge the competencies of localand regional authorities. The second was to give executive power to thepresidents of regional councils and the presidents of Conseils Généraux, thatis to say, the infrastructure-regional level. And the third objective was thecreation of what is the focus of my presentation, that is to say, Contrats dePlan État-Region (CPER), contracts regarding planning between the state andthe region.

The first generation of CPERs took place in �84-�88, and the principlewas 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 theFrench government decided that there would be a strict connection in theschedule, in time-planning, between the CPERs and the Community SupportFrameworks, later on, Single Programming Documents, because the Frenchgovernment decided to switch from the CSF process to the SPD process. Thisconnection has broadened the contractual perspective. During this firstgeneration, the Integrated Mediterranean Programmes that you also know inGreece were in operation and from that time there was a connection betweenthe Integrated Mediterranean Programmes and CPERs, and I was personallyin charge of some parts of CPERs regarding innovation and technologytransfer.

Generally speaking, the experience of CPERs is positively perceivedby French politicians. Of course there are recurring criticisms, but I would saythat 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 alla typical French experience because the French like theory and theoreticalaspects very much, but in fact if you examine this experience you will see thatit�s extremely pragmatic.

The law defines CPERs as �agreements for pluriannual programmingof the financing of priority actions concerning territorial development,� what wecall in France aménagement et développement du territoire. As all of youknow very well, there was a general move in Europe toward decentralisation


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to the benefit of the regions. You have the list of what happened in variouscountries. I think that what was important maybe for you in the Greek contextis that the decentralisation reform in France didn�t need any constitutionalreform, in part because there was no devolution of legislative power to theregions, and the process was very flexible and rather progressive. But it wasprogress, even flexible and pragmatic, etc. Anyway, the CPERs andcontractualisation meant clearly a rupture with the top-down model of planningand aménagement du territoire by the state. And this must not beunderestimated. Now, and in fact from 1984, state and regions are supposedto be equal partners, selecting together common priorities for regional andterritorial development.

The contents of my presentation are: the rationale of CPERs, the roleof the state, negotiation of priorities to be co-financed, and finally theconnection between the CPERs and Structural Funds.

The rationale of CPERs. CPERs, as defined by the law, lead to areciprocal, mid-term financial commitment by the state in each region, withcontractual clauses, having as an objective the selection of current prioritiesfor the economic, social and cultural development of the region and territory.And of course in consequence there has been this natural connection ofCommunity Support Frameworks with CPERs, and with Structural Fundsadding a third financial instrument to national and local/regional financing. Asa principle, priorities have to be selected, taking into account the national planand the regional one, through a process of what we call in Franceconcertation, that is to say, at the same time consultation and consensus-building with key people at regional level, the key points being theidentification and selection of priorities, resulting from a prior strategic andprospective exercise, the updating of the priorities, and the concertation, bothwithin the region and between the state and the region.

Now let us check the combination of three basic principles, apart fromthe key points that I mentioned previously. Contractualisation, planning, andterritorialisation. And, through the review of these three principles, we willcheck some of the realities confronting the theory and the law.Contractualisation: Is there a real equality between contracting parties forselecting common priorities and agreeing upon joint financing commitments?We will check it. Planning: There is no longer a national plan in France


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today. It doesn�t exist any more, because of a lack of credibility due to astronger confidence in market forces and vehicles of economic liberalism thatyou know about of course. So, what? Since there is no more nationalplanning. The third principle is territorialisation: The old top-down approach ofour Ministry for Regional Development � DATAR is not the same approachor 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 lessambitious objective of supporting local regional development. So there is nonational plan, there is no pluriannual document of regional planning andaménagement du territoire. So what? We shall try to get some answers tothat.

Within the framework of this question about principles, conflicts ofinterest and oppositions of objectives between the state and the regions aresupposed to be resolved through negotiated solutions, and arrangementsachieved are supposed to allow both partners to agree on a set of prioritiesselected both scientifically and democratically. Scientifically means throughprospective studies, strategic studies, etc.; democratically means throughconsultation, consensus-building and the famous concertation between keypeople.

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 factthat a national plan no longer exists, has been filled by a short document ofno more than 15-20 pages � prepared by the Préfet de Region, the name ofwhich 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 keypeople: politicians, businesses, universities, etc., and DATAR prospectivestudies at national level. This short document of 15-20 pages, which is a kindof regional bible, is prepared through concertation and consensus-buildingwith key people. Secondly, innovation: There was a deconcentration move �not decentralisation, deconcentration this time � from the state administrationlevel to the Préfets de Region and the SGARs, Secretaires Généraux àl�Action Regionale, giving more direct power to them. That is to say, morethings could be decided in the region and less in Paris. And thirdly, it wasdecided that regional disparities have to be taken into account in theallocation of state fundings through Contrats de Plan État-Region, what wecall in France péréquation.


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In 1993, three operational rules for the negotiation of CPERs wereintroduced, and I think that with this part we enter directly into the verypractical aspects of the mechanisms. Firstly, before the negotiation startsbetween the state and the region, the state indicates the global amount of theallocation it intends to give to its regions, what we call the enveloppe.Secondly, this state allocation, this enveloppe, is divided in two shares. One isthe 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 whatthe object of the negotiation is, if there is one. And the second share is a softshare of 25 per cent of the allocation, which is assigned to projects comingdirectly from the region. The third operational rule: The state must own theimplementation of the criteria concerning the reduction of regional disparities.

And there are two major problems at that time. The first, which is notvery surprising, is that there is often a gap between the strategy and thefinancial plan, the financial document that we call Plan d�Action Chiffré, whichfollows. Because of course during the negotiations that take place betweenthe state and the region, the tendency of not only the state but of the regionalkey peoople as well is to forget a little bit of the strategic axes for the benefitof classical horse-trading. Secondly, and this is very important for us inFrance, the final financial plan is dependent upon the sectoral logics of thevarious 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 isnegotiable not with the region but between the sectoral Ministries and thePréfet de Region, and there is some lobbying by regional politicians to get awider 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. Regionaldisparities have to be taken into account, with three types of regions, rich,normal and poor. Non-negotiable priorities, the hard share, the famous 75 percent, what happens with them? What is the objective of the state? Theobjective of the state for the hard share is to get the financial counterpart fromthe region. So the state says �I have non-negotiable priorities, but you have togive 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


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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 thestates is not so important as it would appear at first glance. Firstly, the state isoften lobbying for projects, and not only for money, not only for having thefinancial counterpart of the hard share. Secondly, the state, and in fact thePréfets de Region may actively support projects prepared and defended bylocal politicians and key people for various reasons, which can be politicalreasons, strategic reasons, whatever. And this last point is very important:The state may support projects in the name of national interest, leading tocontractualisation in the Contrats de Plan État-Region, programmes whichare in theory the exclusive competence of the state. The best example is PlanUniversité 2000. The regions in France have absolutely no competence inhigher education and universities, but because the state has started to ask formoney from the regions it has, in this way, given to the regions some powerof influence over the development of the higher education and universitysystem. So you see the system is rather complex, because the state haslearned to give some power, specifically in state competencies, to theregions. Finally, the state has room for manoeuvre through an always possibleincrease of its financial allocation to the regions, on a case by case basis. Theconsequence is that the Préfet, though an official representative of the state,may be led to make alliances with regional politicians and key peple, in orderto have more influence on Ministries in Paris. And you have a rather subtlemechanism or system of checks and balances.

A criticism about negotiation of priorities, regional disparities andpéréquation: The natural tendency of the state is to put into Contrats de PlanÉtat-Region projects and actions that the regions are prepared to co-finance,which means that the richest regions are in fact privileged, those which havethe money, and it is the opposite of the logic of reduction of regionaldisparities. It benefits the richer regions, which can pay for projects, whichcan pay for the counterparts to the projects proposed by the state. And it�svery easy to verify the financial statistical data.

One last point, the connection between the Contrats de Plan and theStructural Fund. As I said previously, the French government decided very


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soon to establish a strict linkage between CPER pluriannual programming andStructural Fund cycles, �89-�93, �94-�99, 2000-2006. And it was recentlyconfirmed by a circular of the Ministère de l�Environnement et del�Aménagement du Territoire, of January 2000. Since �94, France has adoptedthe SPD system instead of the Community Support Framework. It�s easy tosee, through what I presented before, that there is a coherence between themajor principles of the �88 reforming of Structural Funds and the basis onwhich the CPERs were founded. Subsidiarity, because power of initiative hasbeen given to the regional level, additionality, because there is co-financing,partnership, the famous concertation, consensus-building, etc., andprogramming because it�s pluriannual, it has a strategy, etc. So Contrats dePlan and the SPD are complementary instruments for the implementation ofpolicies of territorial development. CPERs constitute the framework for thenational financial counterparts to Structural Funds, and the Frenchgovernment can say to the Commission that the projects co-financed are aresult of contractual procedures complying with the four principles that Ipresented 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 ofits share in Contrats de Plan État-Region. In Contrats de Plan État-Regionyou have state money, regional money, and the state considers that EUmoney is national money. But this is another question.

The reform of Structural Funds has surely stimulated the role ofregional players in the triangular game played by the Commission, the stateand the regions, and it has surely strengthened the move towarddecentralisation and contractualisation. However, and this is a paradox, theregional 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 isthe national level, DATAR, our Ministry for Regional Development. It hasrecovered a strategic position in the French state administration, as themediator and principal negotiator regarding Structural Funds. The secondbeneficiaries: Préfets de Region and SGARs. They are the major winnersbecause they hold the financial keys not only of the CPERs but of the SingleProgramming Documents at regional level as well, and they are responsiblefor 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


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industry, universities and research institutions, infraregional political level,such as Conseils Généraux, that is to say, the Département level, areconsidered as privileged partners for bargaining.

Let us look at the circular of January 2000: Firstly, the role of thePréfets de Region as the Managing Authority, according to the new SFregulation; secondly, the strengthening of the partnership with all the localauthorities participating in the financing of the Plans, and all key playersinvolved in the implementation; thirdly, the convergence of objectives,agendas, timetables, between Contrats de Plan État-Region and StructuralFunds, Single Programming Documents, as a result of a political decision ofthe French government.

Conclusions. First: In my country, it was very important, because itwas centralised, to establish a common ground between the state and theregions for projects resulting from common priorities and selected through acommon process, that is to say, the institutionalisation of a negotiationprocess and a new model of public management of regional development.That was extremely important. Second conclusion: There was sometendency of the French state to re-centralise in the �90s, but this backwardprocess is probably softening now. Third conclusion: There is no longer inFrance a top-down national bible, national plan, pluriannual document ofAménagement du Territoire. It doesn�t exist any more. We have only thisstrategy of the state for the regions that I mentioned, with contributions fromlocal and regional players. Fourth conclusion: One of the major problems isthe gap between this strategy and the financial plan. But it�s not surprising.Fifth conclusion: Checks and balances during the negotiations allow formaximum flexibility. This leads, in some cases, as I cited for universities andhigher education, to contractualisation of state competencies and �hidden�devolution of state competencies to the regions, and support of the Préfets tolocal regional innovative projects. Sixth conclusion: The reform of StructuralFunds has strengthened the move towards negotiation and contractualisation,to the benefit of local and regional key players. Seven: CPERs and SPD areclosely interrelated at the strategic and financial levels, and Eight: ThroughCPERs and later Community Support Frameworks and Single ProgrammingDocuments, the French state has officially recognised as a fact the interests ofthe regions as being distinct from state interests. It has recognised the


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plurality of partners and players, and it has recognised the local and regionalspecificities.

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 lastspeaker before the coffee break is Professor Michaelidis, of the University ofThessaloniki, who will give us a view from Greece.

PROF.G.MICHAELIDIS: I will apologise for a very, very condensedpresentation which I am going to make. Actually the aim of my presentation isnot to make an exhaustive presentation but to present an open catalogue ofissues, of potential possibilities and of course possibilities for discussion. AndI will not enter into very, very great detail, since we will have an opportunity fordiscussion during the day.

There is a pre-existing situation, that is, pre-existing mechanisms.Since we are talking about the integrated development regional and localplans, the main issue is first of all how infrastructure projects are implementedfor the public interest. On the basis of pre-existing mechanisms, these are theresponsibility of the state, mainly the central state, and regional mechanismscan only implement these projects after this responsibility has specificallybeen legally transfered. And most of the time they don�t have the right toconcede this responsibility to others. Of course there are specific categories ofprojects and infrastructures which can be implemented by non-state entitiesbut always with a specific institutional framework: either the establishment ofsubsidiary companies of the state, or the concession of the construction alongwith the exploitation, or the privatisation of public utilities which have beenoperational in the sector of public infrastructure, or the so-calledtransformation of the concept of public interest to a collective private interest,for instance, private land planning or the industrial and business areas. Ofcourse, these mechanisms remained at the national level and they did notpass onto the regional level. At the regional level, the implementationmechanism for infrastructure projects is still the traditional one.

So for the regional or local development projects, where apart from softactions, etc., we have a great number of infrastructure projects, we had to


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invent a combination of mechanisms. We needed to have a specific provisionin the legislation on investment incentives or a Presidential Decree, while themanagement would be assured by a state entity, for instance, the GeneralSecretariat for Research and Technology, or the mechanism of aprogramming contract, a state entity, a local authority, a method that made itpossible for a non-public agency to manage the contract and execute theproject. This mechanism started in 1985. Some specific legislation provisionsfor actions of the Social Fund, or a joint ministerial decision, management bycompanies with public shareholders, and implementation of projects andactions by local authorities and private individuals, as, for instance, in theLEADER Community initiative. There is also the case of a specific regulatoryprovision by public law legal entities or private law legal entities, the so-calledself-financed agencies. And finally we have the possibility of implementing themechanism of global grants.

In practice, we have had some successes and some failures. You willhear about them later on. At this point I would like to stress mainly the fact thatputting this framework into operation with the creation of new mechanisms agreater flexibility was provided during the previous programming period,flexibility in relation to the traditional funding circuits and procedures of thepublic sector.

But of course there were some risks involved, that is, delays in theprojects, because we had to have the regulatory framework ready for all thetypes of actions, or we had management dysfunctions and delays due to thefact that the projects and actions were unified as far as planning wasconcerned, but not as far as the management was concerned. Theirmanagement and coordination were external to the programme. Theseimperfections were overcome in many cases because it was made possible inthe previous programming period to have a realistic programme management,which was made feasible, first of all because the Structural Funds� regulationswere more flexible in the previous period in comparison to the present one.Second, we had a shared responsibility between the member state and theEuropean Commission, which reached up to the point of the selection of aspecific project. And finally, there was a monitoring system which was notintegrated but which offered the possibility on the other hand of more flexiblemonitoring.


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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 theCSF itself, which means that every framework for the implementation of thelocal and regional development actions is submitted subject to more strictspecifications and prerequisites, and it is expanded as far as itsimplementation scope goes. We also have to follow new strategic directions, amore important involvement of the private sector, both at the level of financingand of the managing effort, and we need to include the projects in acompetitive procedure of projects and actions.

There is a series of developments in the national decentralisationframework. More competencies for the regions, regional services of thecentral administration have been annexed to the regions, regional funds werecreated; we have also a pooling of certain Prefectural services. Expandedlocal authorities� organisations were created, with a prospect for furtherdevelopment.

Moreover, the existing national public investment funding system hasbeen restructured, it provides for the collective project decisions but also theobligation to submit and keep a technical sheet. Regions, therefore, are beingturned into stronger partners in the implementation of regional and localprojects.

Certain problems persist, of course. For instance, we have a generalframework for the establishment of development projects, which does notalways comply with the new CSF framework. Law 1622, includingprogramming competencies for the Regional and Prefectural Councils, hasnot been replaced by Law 2860, and the spatial planning dimension is subjectto Law 1650 and 2742, the most recent one.

And finally, as regards state aid, we have a legal framework, which isbeing modified quite often, maybe a bit too often. The law on incentives is nowbeing revised for the fifth time in a period of 20 years, and we havePresidential Decrees which are issued for a limited time and which are oflimited force.

So we have specific issues which need to be specifically tackled indetail. Most of those, if not all, pertain to the bipolar relationship of the agency


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and the financial circuit, that is, which agency and with which financialmechanism or circuit will implement the project.Another issue is how we aregoing to combine infrastructure projects of public interest with projects andsoft 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 apermanent way, or defined by the appropriate national legislation? A fourthissue: how are we going to clarify the priorities among objectives which are allin principle equally important? We need management flexibility, we needmobilisation of private resources, local and regional control, we need apositive development impact, and procedures for democratic planning andtransparency. A fifth issue, on the agency mainly, is who plans,monitors, implements and controls, and in which combination? Regional orlocal level, central or a combination of both? How are we going to combine themechanisms within the CSF and external to the CSF, in order to have synergyand not a conflict with the competencies? A sixth issue, which could be asolution to the previous one, is to separate, to break down the variouscompetencies. To say, for instance, that the technical responsibility will beunder the General Secretariat of Research and Technology, the managingresponsibility will be under the Managing Authority, the political responsibilityis with the Regional Council, the strategic responsibility under the Ministry ofNational 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 finalbeneficiary can be only one? An eighth issue: How are we going todisseminate the mechanisms which yielded positive results in the previousperiod? And a last point: how can all this be implemented and beefficient, without having any impact on the uptake of the resources and theachievement 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, andcertainly there are newer plans that I do not know personally. We are startingwith something that is already there, that is, the decentralisation andregionalisation of the various procedures which are broadened all the time,either upon the initiative of the national legislation or as a result of theCommunity regional policies. This becomes an objective for a national and


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even a Community strategy in order to achieve competitiveness. Where couldwe look for this? First of all, the issue of concentration of effort. The structureof the regional programmes by space entities or by excellent sectors, that is,where the regional economy can develop new competitive advantages, thetransfer of maximum resources to the regional level, through the support ofthe collective project decisions and a transfer of competencies.

We have the tool of the regional funds, which, on the basis of theirregulatory framework which is quite strict, can play a role, as the Ministry ofNational Economy plays at the level of ministries, in order to allocate, tomonitor and to control the public investment programme in the region.

Another potential issue is the concretisation of the role of the variousregional mechanisms that have been established under a different legalframework. We should try to see how we could have a more substantialinclusion 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 unifiedapproach for all the regions. There is no reason for a public system which isbeing accused of lack of sensitivity to be replaced by another system which isequally inflexible. We have different development priorities, different levels ofreadiness in the various regions, and the objective is to have a bottom-uppromotion of initiatives, so that implementation mechanisms can promotedevelopment.

We could also have a more specialised and global resolution of issuespertaining to aid to the companies, on the occasion of the amendment of Law2601 on investment. All this, if we had the time, we could see in detail, inorder 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, apartfrom the alloy of mechanisms, the main problem in this field, that is, thesupport of innovation and entrepreneurship in the regions, is to create afavourable environment for innovation, so that we can develop bottom-upinitiatives. We need to plan and create permanent appropriate agencies ofcooperation between the regions, the enterprises, the state and all the otheragencies involved. These mechanisms can be established; they are alreadyprovided for in the Operational Programmes.


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In conclusion, if we try to make a synthesis of all the concerns and theproposals that we mentioned, I think we should investigate the feasibility andthe possibility of having an overall framework for the implementation ofregional and local development actions which will be based on the followingtwo pillars.

The first one is increased competence, increased responsibility of theregions in tracing and managing regional and local development policies andprogrammes, a sort of transfer of the subsidiarity principle from the level of theEuropean Union-nation level to the nation-region level. And if we try toanalyse this process, it has already started in Greece. What remains to beinvestigated 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 provedappropriate, effective and efficient. Thank you very much, and of course I amopen to any questions.


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SESSION 1:

LOCAL EMPLOYMENT INITIATIVES

Ms.E.CHRISTOFILOPOULOU: Ladies and gentlemen, dear friends, wewould like to welcome you to this first session. The topic is especiallyinteresting and very challenging for all of us, who work not only fordevelopment but also for employment. We have the honour and the pleasureto have with us today Ms Maribel Lorenzo Barahona from the developmentcompany Bidasoa Activa in the Basque country, and Ms. Teija Raninen, acommunications consultant from the Municipality of Turku, Finland, and ofcourse the Prefect of Magnesia, Mr. Skotiniotis. All three of them will presenttheir expertise on local employment initiatives. I omitted to mention dear LeaVerstraete, who is with us on the panel and who will contribute to thediscussion. She is responsible for the geographical Unit for Greece and Spainin DG Employment. And I think she will contribute very positively to thediscussion that we should have. I will start right away with this session byhanding the floor to Ms. Maribel Lorenzo.

Ms.M.LORENZO BARAHOΝA: Bonjour. Je voudrais remercier lesorganisateurs pour m'avoir invité à participer à cette réunion. Je voudrais,avec cette intervention, vous faire part de notre expérience en termes dedéveloppement des initiatives locales d'emploi. En première partie je vaisvous présenter notre bassin d�action et nos lignes d'intervention. En deuxièmepartie, je présenterai mon organisation, Bidasoa Activa, et ses services.Finalement, dans une troisième partie je parlerai de nos réseaux publics etprivés et les projets que nous avons développés dans cette région.

Le bassin de la Bidasoa, comprend 3 municipalités: Irun, Ondavidia enEspagne et Handaye en France. Il se situe sur la frontière Nord-Ouest del'Espagne avec la France. Un bassin, qui, du côté espagnol compte 70.000habitants, avec un taux de chômage proche des 9%, selon le Service Nationalde l'Emploi. Le secteur économique le plus important dans notre région estcelui des services, mobilisant quelques 62% de nos ressources humaines, lesecteur de l�industrie venant en deuxième position. Il faut signaler que ladimension de nos entreprises est trop petite: 3,3 personnes par entreprise.


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Bidasoa Activa est un organisme public, créé par les ConseilsMunicipaux de la Mairie d'Irun et de la Mairie d'Ondavidia. On travaille aussiavec la Mairie de Handaye en France au travers d'accords ponctuels et deconsortia transfrontaliers.

Quant au cadre institutionnel régissant les questions liées à l'emploi, legouvernement central a les compétences essentielles en cette matière, tandisqu�il y a 17 communautés autonomes qui ont des politiques de promotion del'emploi, en tenant compte que certaines régions, telles Catalunia et Navarrebénéficient d�un transfert de compétences en matière d�emploi. Lesmunicipalités n'ont pas de véritables compétences, mais elles peuventtoutefois développer des politiques locales d'emploi: à titre d� exemple, laMairie d'Irun consacre le 10% de son budget total pour la promotion del'emploi et de l'économie, la promotion d'infrastructure économique, ainsi quecelle de la Société de Développement Local de Bidasoa Activa, monorganisation.

Notre objectif est de soutenir et de promouvoir l'économie locale et lacréation d'emplois. Toutes les activités de promotion de l'économie et del'emploi des municipalités sont menées par Bidasoa Activa. Le capital socialest public, municipal, mais nous recherchons des financements auprès dugouvernement central, des instances européennes, et des autoritésrégionales. Le 25% du budget total de notre organisation est l�apport desmairies, tandis que pour le reste, on le puise dans des programmes financéspar d'autres instances.

La principale activité dans notre bassin était l'activité douanièrejusqu�en 1993, date à laquelle les douanes ont disparu des frontières internesde l�Union Européenne. Plus de 1.000 personnes se sont retrouvées sanstravail. Pour faire face à cette situation on a tracé un plan stratégique et on adécidé de créer l'agence de développement intermunicipale.

Une brève description de nos activités et de nos services : nous avonsprévu des services qui concernent les citoyens en général, les entreprises, lesdemandeurs d'emploi, avec des actions spécifiques en faveur de l'emploisalarié et des nouvelles entreprises. Pour l�emploi, il s�agit essentiellementd'information et d'orientation, tandis que pour les nouvelles entreprises on


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retrouve des services de conseil et de soutien aux entrepreneurs. Nous avonsun secteur entreprise et nous avons aussi mis en place des outils financiersd�aide aux jeunes entreprises. Il y a aussi de la formation, un service d'étudeset 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 demandeursd'emploi.

Nous avons créé un site sur la Toile, qui se voudrait le site parexcellence du développement économique et social de la région. Lesutilisateurs y trouvent des informations, mais aussi des services en ligne. Unautre site sur la Toile est celui de Bidasoa Activa on line entreprises, qui meten réseau les entreprises de Bidasoa Activa pour satisfaire à leurs besoinsd'information et afin, aussi, de faciliter la connaissance et l'utilisation destechnologies nouvelles de l'information et communication.

On a développé aussi une pépinière dont l'objectif est de fournir auxentrepreneurs de l'assistance technique on line. Nous avons aussi développéd'autres outils multimédia comme un outil multimédia d'utilisation etd'informations pour la recherche d'emploi, un autre outil qui permet de réaliserun autodiagnostic personnalisé en gestion d'entreprise, et un programmed'incitation à l'esprit d�entreprise. Ces outils ont été mis en place dans le cadrede projets intégrés dans des programmes européens tels que INTERREG,NOW, HORIZON, etc. pendant les 5 a 6 dernières années. Toutes cesactivités et ces outils se sont développés dans le cadre de la collaborationpublic-privé. De cette façon nous avons créé divers réseaux où sont impliquésBidasoa 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 unbureau de formation, dont l'objectif est de mettre en oeuvre une stratégie deformation à l�unisson avec le Centre de formation du bassin, ainsi qu�avecl�autorité régionale basque. Il existe un autre réseau, la fondation ITC, dontl'objectif est de promouvoir la formation professionnelle pour les employésdes branches du transport et du commerce, au vu de leur grande importancedans notre bassin : les membres de ce réseau sont des entreprises et lescentres de formation. Il existe aussi un réseau de qualité des services


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touristiques qui réunit un certain nombre d� établissements. Dans notre bassinle tourisme est aussi un secteur de poids, et parmi nos membres il y a desentreprises touristiques, des consultants, et des experts ès qualité.

Bidasoa Activa est présente dans tous les réseaux. Il y a une tableronde d'orientation qui oeuvre pour consolider les stratégies qui facilitent lepassage de l'école au travail. A cette table ronde participent les syndicats, lescentres 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 desoutenir les initiatives des entreprises du bassin qui ne disposent pas degaranties autonomes. Un organisme financier réunit les entreprises les plusimportantes de notre bassin, en ayant comme vocation d�aider les petites etles nouvelles entreprises. Puis, il y a Bidasoa Activa on line Entreprises. Nousy retrouvons 85 entreprises aujourd�hui, au sein de ce réseau qui vise àpromouvoir 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 continuentencore, mais nous pensions que c'était nécessaire d'avoir un réseau fort pourdévelopper plus outre la réflexion et la définition des stratégies à suivre, ainsique les actions concrètes pour promouvoir l'emploi, et, par voie deconséquence, l'économie de notre bassin.

C'est la raison pour laquelle on a commencé à travailler pour organiserun vaste réseau avec des syndicats et des entreprises, sachant, comme il aété dit plus haut, que les entreprises de notre bassin sont très petites. Iln'existait pas d'associations d�entrepreneurs ou de chambres de commerce etd�industrie au niveau local. De plus, leurs activités sont très variées. Ilapparaissait 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. Notreobjectif 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, unmoyen 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


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association d'entreprises, ce qui a été fait, avec aujourd�hui, quelques 70entreprises impliquées dans ce réseau.

D'autre part, Bidasoa Activa et les syndicats sont associés dans lecadre du Pacte pour l'Emploi, sachant que des entreprises, comme d'autresinstances, des centres de formation et des associations, participent dans lesactions concrètes. L'objectif du Pacte est d'avoir un outil qui nous permette deréaliser les activités au niveau local dans une stratégie générale, dans unestratégie de promotion de l'emploi et de l'économie du bassin. Nous décidonsce qui doit être fait, et par la suite, on recherche des possibilités definancement dans les divers programmes nationaux, européens et régionaux.Nous faisons toutefois tout notre possible pour mener à bien des activités quenous considérons comme étant indispensables pour notre bassin. Laparticipation des mairies s�élève à 600.000 Euros sur 2 ans. Cet argent doitpourvoir aux activités développées, notamment celles qui ne sont pas prisesen charge par d'autres instances, publiques ou privées. Effectivement, autantde financements on trouve auprès du secteur privé ou auprès d�autresorganismes, autant il reste des montants disponibles pour mettre en oeuvreou pour instiguer d'autres activités. Ces 600.000 Euros constituent la basepour promouvoir ce pacte.

On a fait une étude du marché pour voir quels sont les besoins denotre bassin et on a défini 6 lignes d'action. La ligne stratégique 1, c'estl'intervention dans la politique générale de la dimension de l'égalité deschances entre les hommes et les femmes. La ligne stratégique 2 c'estdévelopper une proposition de coopération pour améliorer les capacitésd'insertion professionnelle. La ligne stratégique 3, c'est faciliter la création, lagestion et la fusion des entreprises. La ligne stratégique 4, c'est développeractivement le potentiel du bassin dans le domaine de la société del'information, sur les fronts de la formation, la création d'emplois, avecl'utilisation des nouvelles technologies d'information et de la communication.La ligne stratégique 5 c'est de faire de ces stratégies du bassin proche ducentre de San Sebastian un facteur déterminant pour la création d'emploi et ledéveloppement d'activités économiques. Et la ligne stratégique 6 définit toutel�attention à apporter aux groupes spécifiques, ceux qui ont des difficultésd'insertion à l'emploi, les chômeurs de longue durée, mais aussi la lutte contrele travail au noir et la précarité de l'emploi.


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Dans ce cadre stratégique d�action on a commencé à développerplusieurs activités. Pour donner un exemple de la coopération entre le secteurprivé 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 régionaleBasque que des entreprises privées. Le budget total est de 140.000 Euros etla participation privée s�élève à 30%, la participation du Pacte à 25%, surtouten prestation de services, et la participation publique 45%. Un autre exemplede tels services est celui de la garde d�enfants de mères et de pères quisuivent des cours de formation. Ce projet aussi a des financements privés.

Sachant qu�au niveau local nous n'avons pas de véritablescompétences en matière d'emploi, les mairies n'ont pas de compétencesd'emploi, nous nous efforçons, en mettant en oeuvre ces projets, depromouvoir les activités que nous voulons, que nous considérons commeétant importantes en profitant des aides et des programmes au niveaurégional, national et européen. Avec les projets européens on a pu innoverbeaucoup et expérimenter beaucoup.

Je voudrais citer quelques autres projets de la même ligne, du Pactepour l'Emploi, ainsi que des autres lignes stratégiques du bassin, pour quevous puissiez voir comment on travaille dans les réseaux.

Un projet a comme objectif de mettre en place des dispositifsd'insertion pour les groupes sociaux qui rencontrent les plus grandesdifficultés d'insertion, comme les femmes et les immigrés, en ayant surtoutrecours à l'utilisation des techniques et de l'apprentissage tout au long de lavie. Ici, les promoteurs du projet sont très variés, c'est Bidasoa Activa, lesmairies, les centres de formation, les associations culturelles, l'associationdes 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 etde son activité.

Finalement, nous avons préparé le projet LEONET, avec une lignebudgétaire spécifique bassin, concernant la création d'un Observatoire Localde l'Emploi, l'objectif étant de diffuser la stratégie européenne pour l'emploi etéchanger des expériences pratiques, pas seulement au sein de notre bassin,mais avec d'autres régions de l'Europe.


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Je vous remercie pour votre attention.

Ms.E.CHRISTOFILOPOULOU: I think that the importance of networks isalready obvious. The notion of collaboration at the local level is an importantissue to us and the role of new technologies is another topic which wasshown, very, very appropriately, by Ms. Lorenzo�s presentation. Now let�s goto the other end of Europe, to Finland. I would like to ask Ms. Raninen topresent her experience.

Ms.T.RANINEN: Ladies and gentlemen, I come from Finland, from theMunicipality of Turku. I would like to thank the organisers and the EuropeanCommission for the invitation to come here today and present our initiative topromote 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 inFinland and it used to be the former capital of Finland. And the name of Turkumeans a centre for trade and exchange. Our population in the whole region is283,160, and the population of the city is approximately 170,000. Today I amgoing to talk about a local initiative to promote employment in our city. Thereis an unemployment rate in the city which is quite high, approximately 14 percent, and in the whole region approximately 11 per cent. And here are somenice pictures of our city.

First of all, maybe a couple of words about our municipality system areneeded. The local authorities in Finland have wide responsibilities. Theseinclude both local functions, which benefit residents, and functions specified invarious laws. For example, social services and health care are mainlyprovided by the municipalities. More than half of the employees of the entiremunicipal sector work in social services and health care. Finland�s stronglocal self-government derives from independent taxation rights. Localauthorities fund nearly half of their operations out of their own tax revenues.Tax revenues count for 53 per cent of the municipality�s income. Governmentgrants are another source of income for local authorities, accounting for 14per cent of their income revenues. Operating revenues make up about 26 percent of the municipality�s income, and loans bring in about 2-4 per cent.


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Since we are talking about employment, it is essential to show how theemployment issues in Finland are organised at different levels. First of all, thenational level has the primary responsibility for employment and employmentservices. The government appropriation to create jobs is given tomunicipalities and government departments. At the regional level we haveemployment and economic development centres, which are the responsibilityof the employment offices at the local level. The municipal level needs toadjust the employment measures of the municipality with the employmentlegislation.

And now to the project which I am going to talk about today. Thisproject is called the LEMPA project, which means translating EuropeanEmployment Strategy to the local level. The background of this project datesback to 1997, when the city of Turku got involved in the PARTNERSHIPproject and Territorial Employment Pact. In fact, the unit where I work,ABONET, was created as a project, as a technical assistance unit for theTerritorial Employment Pact. The Territorial Employment Pact has been veryimportant to the city, because it has made it possible to create very goodpartnerships between private, public and the third sector. The coordinator ofthis LEMPA project was the Association of Finnish Local and RegionalAuthorities, and the partners in this project were the cities of Kymi, Lokya,Kayani, Kokkora and the city of Turku. This project was funded by theEuropean Commission, DG Employment and Social Affairs. The objective ofthe overall project was to give information about the European EmploymentStrategy and to develop and test the local operational models to create a localaction 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 localemployment strategies and action plans. The Commission encourages thelocal levels to create their own actions plans for employment that are basedon local needs. And it is at the local level where jobs are created and lostand where the effects of local unemployment are felt. In this project, all fivecities involved had their own sub-projects, and they did it with the cooperationof the Association of Finnish Local and Regional Authorities. As a result, thewhole LEMPA project consists of five different operational models for localaction plans. And another result is the evaluation of the compatibility of


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different operational models, or action models, for local action plans and theEuropean 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 topromote employment and fight against unemployment. The unemploymentrate in Turku has fallen at an agonisingly slow pace, despite the recovery fromthe economic depression of the early 1990s. As you saw, the unemploymentrate is still 14 per cent in our city. Our operational model differed from theother cities, because in our project the main aim was to create an employmentstrategy for the city, and we did it because we feel that we cannot create alocal action plan before the city has its own employment strategy. The phasesof the project were the organisation phase, where we set up a steering groupfor the project, which included the Mayor of the city and the highest localauthorities from each sector of the city. By this I mean the industrial sector,health sector, social sector, personnel sector, education, youth, etc. And alsoin the steering group were representatives of the employment office; thedirector of our local employment office was involved, and also arepresentative of the Association of Southwest Entrepreneurs. These peoplemade it possible for this work to be taken seriously, and the informationneeded for the analysis phase was given to us.

Here is the analysis phase. The analysis phase was broken down intothe following parts: identifying the demand for labour, identifying the supply oflabour, identifying the effects of unemployment and identifying investments inpromoting employment. From this picture, you can see that we feel thatemployment cannot be treated as a separate matter but it is linked to thewelfare policy, education policy and business policy. We did take intoconsideration the welfare policy because it is important to get new jobs for ourcity, but it does not take care of the unemployment situation in our city. Overhalf of our city�s unemployed are long-term unemployed, and creating newjobs for our city is not a solution for many of them. We need different tools anddifferent services for the unemployed people in the city.

In the field of labour demand, we have analysed the competitiveness ofthe private, public and the third sector. This analysis gives us informationabout the present situation in the labour market and information about thefuture needs. Possibly the single most important factor in the field of


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employment is competitiveness. That is why the competitiveness of theregion�s industries and private services was explored in the project. In laboursupply, we have analysed the present labour structure, the future labourstructure 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 employmentyearly in our employment programme. The city establishes a non-bindingletter of intent agreement for the treatment of unemployment with theEmployment and Development Centre�s Labour Division and with the TurkuEmployment Office. The letter of intent agreement mainly defines the divisionof labour and the investments on jointly implemented labour policy actions.The employment appropriation of Turku for the year 2001 is 34.6 millionFinnish marks, which is approximate six million euros, of which 4.5 millionFinnish marks is for summer jobs for young people. The governmentcompensation sum is 23.7 million Finnish marks. Then we analysed theeffects of unemployment on a person and on the economy and the services ofthe city. By this I mean the costs that arise from unemployment, for examplein the health and social sector.

We have also clarified the roles of different departments in the city withregard to employment matters. This is very important, because the truth is thatcities and municipalities have more responsibilities regarding employmentthan before. From these analyses we have drawn conclusions and now weare at the phase of making strategic selection. This selection and theidentification 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, creatingnew jobs in the Turku region. In this, targets for development are securing theavailability of competitive labour in the future, which is essential for the futureemployment policy challenge. The current labour reserve is not sufficient forthe main occupations� demand. Therefore measures to secure the growingdemand should be taken. The second target for development is theanticipation system for the strategic fields which should be developed in sucha way that will allow the needs of labour demand and know-how to berecognised yearly and early enough. With qualitative anticipation, theavailability of labour demanded by the growing industries can be shared. Thecity of Turku has made a strong choice and wants to focus on bio-industry,


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ICT and logistics. In the welfare policy, the focal points are reducing expensesresulting from employment. The targets for development: the city mustdetermine the costs deriving from unemployment in the different branches ofthe administration. And another example: the unemployed heavy users ofsocial and health services must be identified. Cooperation betweenadministration branches must be established to evaluate these clients� abilityto work. Appropriate steps must be taken to enhance the clients� situation.The targets for development are turned towards the future for activemeasures, by matching the overall strategy of the city of Turku and theEuropean Employment Strategy. After these conclusions from theseanalyses, we have made a strategic selection and we have identified thetargets for development. And now we also have preparatory measures for alocal 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 strategyfor the city, and we have an operational model to create a local action plan foremployment. We have also made a project proposal for development, pilotingand monitoring the implementation of the employment strategy of the city. Inthe future there will be active measures and we will have a local action planfor employment.

Now you probably wonder: where is the national action plan, and whatwill happen next? Here is the analysis from the industrial policy, educationpolicy, welfare policy and personnel policy. We have now identified andclarified the targets for development. Previously we have had a letter of intentagreement with the Employment Office and the Employment andDevelopment Centre, which is under the Ministry of Labour. Now we have hadnegotiations with the regional authorities that we will have a wider letter ofintent agreement. Earlier it was only made with the labour division. Now wewill have an agreement with different divisions, divisions under the Ministry ofTrade and Industry, Ministry of Education, Ministry for Social Affairs andHealth. And we will have also negotiations at the national level with theministries, and through the negotiation process we will have a local actionplan, operations and of course there is a need for monitoring and evaluation.

Ladies and gentlemen, I thank you for your attention.


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Ms.E.CHRISTOFILOPOULOU: Thank you very much, Ms. Raninen. I thinkyou showed us the importance of analysis in politics and in policy-making. Ithink there is a lot to ask Ms. Raninen after the end of the presentations. And Iwould like to ask Mr. Skotiniotis to take the floor, reminding him that it is veryimportant that we have an elected Prefect present among us. Mr. Skotiniotis isthe elected Prefect of Magnesia, and I think he will give us the point of view ofthe mobilisation of the local community.

Mr.P.SKOTINIOTIS: I think I couldn�t do otherwise. Thank you. In a recentpresentation, Ms. Diamantopoulou, the Commissioner for the issues we aretalking about, employment that is, said that in our era of globalisation whereeverything moves freely and we have economies which are closelydependent upon each other, we are noticing an explosion of localdevelopment and of local planning. So these two things move hand in hand.

We have no illusions, so we cannot have the expectation that a localauthority or a local initiative has the opportunity to solve the major globalproblem of our era. The solution of this problem depends on a series offactors, and most of the time we can only have a minimal impact on theseexternal factors. We are living in an era where the trend for globalisation ofmarkets and for supranational integration processes goes hand in hand withthe trend for decentralisation and the reinforcement of the role of local andregional authorities in questions of employment. For those of us working inlocal authorities therefore, it is a major question and it is a question of socialresponsibility, and we must use every possibility for the development of newjobs. Even one single job is very important. In this way, it is very important forus to work towards the inclusion of binding indicators on the national andEuropean level concerning the Territorial Pacts, for instance. Our regionshave implemented and are still implementing local territorial pacts foremployment, and mainly these pacts were implemented in regions with highrates of unemployment. This process brought to the same negotiations tablefor the first time first and second-tier local authorities, workers, farmers, localemployment agency offices, women entrepreneurs, all those involved in thelocal productive category. The territorial pacts must be a voluntary scheme ofcollaboration, aiming at promoting employment in viable and competitiveproductive activities. The territorial pacts must seek the best possiblesituations for entrepreneurial activity in order to increase employment.


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A territorial pact is a pact meaning collaboration among specificsectors, where every contracting party has something to offer. Eighty-nineregions in the European Union were selected in a pilot phase for theimplementation of this initiative. Seven out of these regions were Greekregions. Magnesia was one of these regions, and we started this activity at theend of 1997. Magnesia is a prefecture with a long industrial and commercialtradition, and in the middle of the �80s, for at least ten years, it went through avery important crisis of de-industrialisation, which left very important marks onthe social fabric. And this also resulted in an explosion of unemployment. Thedepartmental authorities of Magnesia started their operation in 1995, that is, atthe highest point of the unemployment crisis. And the local authorities took theinitiative of drawing up a plan for the social and economic integration of theirdepartment, through a very broad social and political dialogue. That was acrucial option at the time. Employment was to be promoted as a strategicgoal. This deeply political choice allowed us to promote, in collaboration withthe national government, a series of policy measures with visible impacts. Andfrom the first moment, we were able to make full use of the new institution ofthe territorial pacts.

Since October 1997, when we started with the implementation of theterritorial pacts, a coordinating secretariat has been set up, and it includes theprefectural authorities of Magnesia, the Municipality of Volos and theMunicipality of Nea Ionia, Labour Centre of Volos, the Association ofIndustries in Thessaly and Central Greece and the Chamber of Magnesia, aswell as the Employment Office of Volos, the local employment agency ofOAED. Technical and secretarial support is supplied by the MagnesiaDevelopment Company, which provides these services even after technicalassistance stopped on the 31st of December 1999.

Under the responsibility of the coordinating secretariat, we made up abusiness plan which analysed the existing potential and unemployment in theregion. As typical actions that were implemented in the framework of theMagnesia Territorial Pact, I could mention some actions for the utilisation ofthe comparative advantage of our prefecture in tourism. We supportedactivities in alternative forms of tourism. We set up and supportedassociations of women. We supported the social economy. We created asupport mechanism in the farming sector, and we created a network of smallcompanies specialised in gold and silver work. We faced a lot of problems


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during this first pilot phase. We had a lot of difficulties in monitoring andcoordinating the actions, because we didn�t have the appropriate personnel.And very often these actions were implemented because only a very fewindividuals were capable, and they took up all of the work load.

On the regional level the territorial pacts were integrated into theRegional Operational Programmes without, however, the necessaryprovisions, without having set up the appropriate institutional and controlframework. On the national level coordination and monitoring of the pilotterritorial pacts was secured by the National Labour Institute, but it wassuspended at the end of 1999 and the coordinating authorities of the seventerritorial pact regions and the people were left without this valuable technicalassistance. Activities financed by OAED were ambitious activities, but theywere not horizontal actions and they did not safeguard harmonisation with thegeneral policy. We had a lot of difficulties; however, the basic objective wasthe convergence of viewpoints concerning planning and the implementation ofactions. We experienced positive elements at the level of the department andat the level of the productive and social agencies, because for the first timethey all sat together and discussed the problem of unemployment. Now theCoordinating Secretariat is a fundamental intervention tool for the promotionof employment in the region: a very positive point therefore, on the level ofthe prefecture.

The territorial pacts for the period we are talking about have achievedvery important results: the creation of new enterprises, the creation of newjobs. And they have also contributed in reducing the rate of unemployment.Through the territorial pact actions, more than 1,000 new jobs were created inthe whole of Greece: 70 new jobs for our prefecture, and more than 7,000unemployed individuals were the beneficiaries of the OAED actions. These7,000 unemployed individuals created their own enterprises, and more than18,000 individuals were employed in businesses of the private or social sectorthroughout Greece. The actions of the territorial pacts were the best form oflinking employment and training, since training actions were designed so thatskills would be acquired for those being trained. Valuable experience wasacquired by the Regional Operational Programme actions, and we receivedpositive comments, since we had very good absorption rates in Sub-programme 9 of the Operational Programme of Thessaly. We had more than


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a 90 per cent take-up rate in two years and we will have reached 100 percent by the end of the year.

At the level of the European Union, we had the opportunity to work withand get to know people from the General Directorates of the European Union,and we had the opportunity to exchange experiences with territorial pacts ofother regions.

Finally, another very positive point is that we created a single,integrated, local action plan for employment, for the years 2000-2006. Webased this on an the analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of ourdepartment, and this action plan was structured on the basis of the four pillarsof the National Action Plan for employment. It is very important to stress thatthe territorial pact must have prospects beyond the prospects of OperationalProgramme financing; that is, partners must constantly look for new sourcesof capital and for new mechanisms. The territorial pacts cannot constitute alocal initiative for employment, and cannot only wait for European Social Fundfinancing. It must be an integrated programme which must use integratedinterventions, and it is clear that for the success of this goal we need theactive participation of the private sector, as well, and the private sector is stillhesitant concerning the territorial pacts. We have also created a network ofterritorial pacts throughout Greece.

In conclusion, we would say that unemployment is a very complexproblem and it can not be faced only through the territorial pacts; however,the territorial pacts can help in promoting employment, in the long term, andthis can be a complementary tool.

Decentralisation is, I think, the right path to success, because thepolicies must be adapted to the needs of individuals. Unemployment is notonly a social problem; unemployment is the personal drama of everyunemployed individual and of their families. Territorial pacts must bespecifically guided and oriented, and their local impact must be safeguarded.The territorial pacts must be true pacts, with the true participation of labourcentres, chambers, regions, social actions and the central nationalemployment agency. Specific modifications must be brought to theinstitutional framework, the legislative framework of our country, so that theterritorial pacts become more effective. We must seek complementarity with


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other European programmes, in order to have the best impact possible, andwe need collaboration with central government, in order to better coordinatethe actions. Local employment pacts and territorial pacts, must serve thegoal of tackling unemployment, which is an overall goal for our country and forour society.

Thank you very much.

Ms.E.CHRISTOFILOPOULOU: We thank the Prefect of Magnesia, becausehe gave us, I think, on the one hand the specific results and the problems ofthe local territorial pact, and on the other hand he also gave us the politicaldimension, which is very important to us.

Two or three points on the synthesis of what we heard. First point: it isnot by chance that the local dimension of unemployment is a horizontalguideline of the European employment strategy. It is exactly what Mr.Skotiniotis said very eloquently. Through the local dimension we try torespond to the problem of employment, which is being borne by policieswhich on the supranational level are planned and implemented, and influencethe local level. Indeed, the local dimension is the area where we have to fightfor the European employment strategy, and I think this was obvious in allthree presentations.

However, this brings me to the second point. It is very difficult. Fromwhat we heard, we understand that it is not enough to plan. It is necessary toplan, to analyse, to build mechanisms, to monitor them, to evaluate them, butit is not enough to plan per policy sector, per policy branch. We need to havehorizontal networks between sectors, and we need these horizontal networksat the local level. And this brings me to a point mentioned by Ms. Lorenzo inher presentation. She gave us the example of Spain. These networks startbeing implemented on a project by project basis, with an incentive, with acertain funding, etc. � these networks must be a part of daily practice. I thinkthis is the second point for discussion. And how can we achieve thesehorizontal networks? Are they going to be sufficient? I am afraid they will notbe sufficient, and I think this was obvious from the last presentation, becausewe 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, andamong the others, that is, all those involved in this dimension and in this


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challenge of linking development and employment. A network linking the localproject production mechanism and the municipality mechanism for economicdevelopment 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 thetable. Mr. Skotiniotis said that. He said that they sat around the table anddiscussed. That is dialogue. Dialogue is very important, because it isimpossible to break the isolation brought about by the information society. Weare talking about a huge contrast. On the one hand, the new technologiesfacilitate local actions and information on the local and on the supranationallevel. But it is also an isolationist tool in our societies. It is very important, andI think this is the third point that we have seen in the presentations, to seedialogue at the local level and the involvement and mobilisation of all theagencies, all the bodies, all the citizens actually, all the non-governmentalorganisations, because all this must reach the citizens. And I think this is thenext point for the discussion. And now the floor is over to you, ladies andgentlemen. Please ask questions and make comments.

Mr.Ch.SAMARAS: I am Mayor of Irakleia in Serres, and I am also here asthe president of an urban, non-profit-making company, where we have theChamber of Commerce of Eastern Macedonia. It is the local territorial pact inthis area. This project covers our municipality and other neighbouringmunicipalities, around Lake Kerkini, which is a very well-known wetland whichis protected by the Ramsar Convention. For this area we have developed alocal territorial pact. We submitted it to the region in January 2000, and then itwas re-submitted in October 2001. I will not enter into the detail of this localterritorial 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 thatno procedures are yet in place. What you said and what Mr. Skotiniotis said istrue: the new situation with the Capodistrias municipalities is also a fact � wehave started a dialogue between populations which have never dealt withsuch procedures. The local societies have started to be involved in this, andthey are expecting things from us, because this first contact was reallyshocking for them. And for us it is really very, very important and we nowhave time going by without things taking place. The region answers that theprocedures are not open yet for these local territorial pacts. On the one handthere is the administrative part, the state administrator, and on the other handthere is the political dimension. We are called upon to defend this localterritorial pact, this procedure. This is why I raise this question and make this


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comment. I think it is important to others as well. We expect your interventiontowards the decision-makers.

Ms.E.CHRISTOFILOPOULOU: Thank you for those comments. Is there anyother question, any other comment?

Ms.G.ZEMBILIADOU: Thank you. I am the Head of the Managing Authority inWestern Macedonia. We have heard very good examples from the Basquecountry and from Finland on local territorial pacts. Through the second CSFsuch projects were implemented in our regions. The problem that arises, and Iwould like to have an answer on that by the panellists, is how can we preservethe results of these territorial pacts? Through which mechanisms and throughwhich 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 inthe Institute of Labour, and I represent the Greek General Confederation ofLabour. I would like to remind us of an interesting remark by Mr. Theos in hisaddress, that with regard to the managing of the resources of the StructuralFunds we are actually in a process of reform of practices and behaviours atthe 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, anissue that we need to discuss in detail. First of all, we have some problems asregards the quantitative evaluation and assessment of the results of theStructural Funds in our country. Unemployment remains quite high, as weknow and there is a duality in the labour market and in the economy. Theestimates vary, but we have unemployment which is not declared and which isquite high, and at the level of the country and in many regions we witness adual feature in the economy. There are branches or sectors which aredeveloped, which are growing, which are integrated in the Europeaneconomy, sometimes with impressive rates, but there is also an important partof our economy, a great part, which faces serious competitive problems,which adopts various practices with a view to surviving under the newcompetitive conditions. We have an economy, which is developingsubstantially in terms of the GDP growth, but if we try to calculate the inflow ofmigrant workers during the last ten years we will see that the increase ofproductivity is not so great. So undeclared employment plays a more


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important role than we think for a labour-intensive growth. We need to solvesome qualitative issues. We need to say at a meeting such as this one thatthe problem of lack of development strategies on the local and regional levelis an important problem. We have regions in Greece where declining activitiesare quite obvious. We see them all the time: Unemployment is high and theestimates say that it will increase, and we have not stated any long-termobjectives in order to face this problem. The implementation modes on thelocal level present serious problems, functional problems, survival problemsas regards customer relations, and of course we have this at the local and atthe national level. We need to make some important changes as regards theway we manage local development. First of all, we need to have a moresystematic, a more in-depth knowledge of the reality at the local and theregional level, whether we are talking about the economy or the labourmarket. 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 theManaging Authority of Western Macedonia. We all know that in order to beable to offer viable solutions to some problems we need to understand theseproblems, that is, to know the reality of these problems as accurately aspossible. So I would like to ask Ms. Raninen from the project in Turku whetherthey have developed any methodology for recording or measuringunemployment and labour demand in the city of Turku, to what extent thisresponds to the reality, and whether they have built a mechanism for apermanent record of this problem, or whether all the data that you havepresented to us were based on national statistical data?

For Ms. Lorenzo I would like to make a comment. I think it would bevery interesting if you could provide information on how the municipalities canco-finance this project with EUR 600,000. Where do these resources comefrom, for the co-financing of a project? Thank you.

Ms.E.CHRISTOFILOPOULOU: Yes, Ms. Kanellopoulou, Secretary General ofthe region of Ionian Islands.


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Ms.T.KANELLOPOULOU: I don�t want to make an intervention; however wehave been listening to some things and we need to correct some wrongimpressions. Everybody in this room knows that there has been planning inorder to reach the point where we are today, in order to start theimplementation of some projects, in order to launch some practices, and ofcourse the ultimate goal is to increase employment and also preserve thesejobs in the future. So we cannot talk about lack of regional planning, becausethat would contest all the work, all the effort that has been made during theselast two or three years under very strict rules, setting objectives andperformance indicators. Therefore, I want to eliminate such an impressionfrom this room. We need to stress that in every region planning foremployment is based on the dynamics in each region. The economy is notstatic, it does not start now. The economy has certain dynamics, and on theone hand these dynamics must be preserved, and on the other hand theeconomy 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 thisadditional dimension, which will allow us to offer this perspective. We haveinnovation programmes, we have the best practices, about which we aretalking, about which we are listening to the speakers today. We areexchanging experience today in order to be able to support precisely thiseffort and to support the regional planning. So we need to take all this intoaccount. In every region there is an action plan that offers valuable elementson employment, on the prospects of employment and the prospects of theinvestments that we are carrying out through the regional programmes.

Ms.E.CHRISTOFILOPOULOU: Mr. Matsingos, Secretary General of theregion of the Peloponnese.

Mr. MATSINGOS: I would like to make some comments. First of all, we needto understand the term �regional development�: what does it mean and whatdoes it mean when we are talking about a regional programme? If we look atall the regional programmes, they all have their axes, and there are specificobjectives that they serve. Then we have an overall strategy, a global strategyin every programme, and we have a strategy which is combined for all theprogrammes. On the other hand, when we are talking about regionaldevelopment and when we try to implement a project or programme, what arethe objectives? What does regional development mean, and how can wemeasure it? The first objective is the earning of revenue and the second one


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is the creation of jobs, otherwise we don�t have regional development. So it isan error to approach the whole thing in a simplistic way, without entering intothe depth of regional development, without seeing what objectives it serves.

However, I would like to offer another dimension on the issue ofemployment. Usually we talk about unemployment and employment inindustrialised or de-industrialised areas, where an important number ofunemployed people exist. We forget the remote areas; we forget agricultural,rural areas; we forget mountainous areas, where a lot of people are employedin the agricultural sector, and false underemployment. We need to focus ourefforts in some areas, in some regions. One of those regions is thePeloponnese, where there is a considerable proportion of employment in theprimary sector. There the emphasis should be placed on actions that we aregoing to plan through integrated programmes, because this is how we aregoing to serve the basic objective, which is either to maintain the population inthe mountainous, underprivileged areas, or to establish the prerequisites inorder to attract investors and in order to create jobs. Thank you.

Ms.E.CHRISTOFILOPOULOU: Mr. Karatziotis, Secretary General of theregion of Thessaly. I will give you the floor right away and then we will take theanswers.

Mr. KARATZIOTIS: I would not take the floor if we did not have thisdiscussion on regional planning. I think it is very, very important -and it hasbeen one of the points of our negotiation- to talk about the negotiations for theestablishment of the Regional Operational Programme and the CSF. Thesewere exhausting procedures; we started very early, and through theseprocedures 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 ownplan. And these are procedures through which the employees, the employersand other agencies� municipalities, etc. participated. There are procedureswhich were widely known at the national level. The first meeting of theMonitoring Committee of the CSF in ATHINAIS, where we hadrepresentatives 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 Communitydemands and co-financed by other agencies. We need to have all this inmind. Of course, the people present here, managing authorities, secretaries-


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general, Structural Fund representatives, etc., know that we are working onthe basis of a plan which is partly strict, partly loose, but on all levels we haveagreed upon a development plan which starts to unfold as it is beingimplemented. Thank you.

Ms.E.CHRISTOFILOPOULOU: Thank you very much. Yes, you have thefloor.

Mr.A.KALIATZIDIS: I have been supervising the seven pilot projects foremployment for three and a half years. I think I am an appropriate person; Iknow both facts and practices, and I would like to ask you not to think that Iam attempting to express any doubts on regional planning. Nobody wouldcontest the work behind regional planning, and there is a lot of work which hasbeen 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 ofthe timetable necessary for these mechanisms. Since we are here today inorder to underline these points pertaining to the regional character, somecomplaints may be voiced.

The Mayor talked about a specific experience, and I would like to givemy own personal experience. Every three months I had a huge problem,because it was part of my contractual obligations; every three months theCommission would come and ask me what new projects have beenpresented by Greece. And I had a national problem as well, because, as aGreek expert, in my quarterly report I had to write that in the last three monthswe didn�t have a new project and there was no new project anywhere else inGreece. This is a reality. I wouldn�t like to contradict what the Prefect said, butif we have a look at the network where Irakleia is a member as well, there areeight or nine areas, and beyond those eight or nine areas there are no otherareas or regions which have worked out an action plan and promoted thatplan. And I think this is a point for us to think of. All of us who have stated inthe third CSF that we do promote something, perhaps we should make ananalysis and not only state what we will promote; perhaps we should callupon the various bodies to submit their specific plans. I have very often heardthat the procedure must now be open, the mechanisms must be created. Ithink 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 goto Turku for the dissemination of the pacts throughout the European Union � avery successful meeting and I was very glad to participate. I have a questionfor you and the other speaker from the Basque country as well: How will yousafeguard the viability of those actions, which started in the pilot phase andare 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 yourregion?

Ms.E.CHRISTOFILOPOULOU: Thank you very much. That was the lastquestion, and before I give the floor to the speakers allow me to make a verybrief comment. Thank you very much for all of your comments, and I think thatthis last comment is close to the discussions that took place in Zappeion somedays ago, the discussion between the national authorities and the EuropeanUnion. You know very well that for new initiatives to develop we needmonitoring committees first, which will have adopted the programmecomplements. And I should add that everything must take place in a verydemocratic way. And we need all the data. I don�t want any of you to leavethis room thinking that there are no quantity indicators on the physical andeconomic objects. We have these indicators, and you know we do. You areEuropean Union experts, and I think you should be aware of what Mr.Meadows had called a machine failure. He had said that there could bemachine problems in the machine infernale that he had mentioned. Thereforewe are all partners in this process, and there is a challenge for us, and thischallenge for us is that local initiatives should come out of this hugemechanism, and the citizens should benefit from this blooming of localinitiatives. And this is not at all easy to do, and I would like to ask all those incharge 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 youask them how many calls for proposals have been prepared, how manyweekends they have not seen their families in order to have this mechanismput in place. And the Mayor is right; he is absolutely right. In the discussion wewill have the opportunity to see that we are very close to each other, dearMayor. I must assure you that but both we and the European Union havemade really hard efforts.


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Now I would like to ask Ms. Lorenzo and Ms. Raninen from Spain andfrom Finland to take the floor � and Mr. Skotiniotis, after the two ladies. Thankyou.

Ms.M.LORENZO BARAHONA: Je vais tenter de répondre à l�essentiel desquestions.

Une première question concerne l�origine des financements du Pactepour l'Emploi, les 600.000 Euros. Ces fonds proviennent des mairies, desimpôts locaux; nous partons de l'argent public, mais c�est uniquement unebase. Par la suite il nous faut rechercher d�autres financements auprès desentreprises 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 cesréseaux, on part de données statistiques. Au sein de notre agence dedéveloppement il y a un service statistique et nous travaillons aussi avec leService Statistique national, mais il faut trouver au niveau local les donnéeslocales et les données locales dans les statistiques nationales. Nous avonsmis en place un service de prospection et nous visitons constamment toutesles entreprises du bassin pour voir quels sont leurs besoins et pour y recueillirdes informations statistiques brutes, le nombre d'employés, leur profil, etc.Nous avons aussi conçu un système d'information qui reprend toutes nosactivités et toutes les données que nous recueillons auprès des entreprises etde leurs employés. Nous nous basons certainement aux données officiellesde l'état, mais nous devons aussi mener des enquêtes locales, parce queautrement nous n'aurions pas suffisamment de données. Nous suivons aussides indices économiques relatifs au chiffre d�affaires et d�autres paramètresde l�activité de nos entreprises que nous fournissent mensuellement cesentreprises auxquelles nous communiquons un formulaire statistique. C'estdonc avec toutes ces informations qu�on commence à travailler pour formulerles projets qui se développent au sein du Pacte d'Emploi et du ForumEconomique.

Ms.T.RANINEN: I will try to remember all the questions. First of all, about thepartnership. I told you that the partnership, a very good partnership, wascreated during the Territorial Employment Pact when it started in 1997. Andin this LEMPA project we have brought different operators in Turku into closer


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cooperation, even in the planning stages of the procedures. This is what wedid in the Territorial Employment Pact and also in this project. I think that it isimportant that we understand that we all need, all of us local people needeach other. The private sector in Finland needs the public sector, because ifwe think about -first of all- the industrial policy, it is the city which is developingthe operating prerequisites and competitiveness of business. It is the city, thecitizens that are securing the availability of labour. We need each other. And Ithink that it is very important. We have negotiations every time there is a bigproject starting with the private and the third sector. Then how to preserve thepartnership? 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 theanalysis and the data that we used. Yes, we did use national statistical data,but we also have local statistical data from the Employment and DevelopmentCentre, the Labour Division. And something that we learnt during this projectwas that there wasn�t enough information, so it is very important in the futurethat the city also takes part in gathering the needed data. We needanticipation. We need anticipation in industrial policy, in social policy, in healthpolicy, 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 localinitiatives for employment has been a new concept. This is a new conceptoverturning older concepts consolidated in the first and second tier of localgovernment. So this new concept makes us work in a different way. It has notallowed us to follow the same comfortable attitude. We had the programmesfor combating unemployment, which were very important; however, thoseprogrammes only included some amounts of money given to municipalities inorder 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 inDecember 1995 when the Committee of the Regions in Brussels made areport for the first time. There was only the Municipality of Kalamaria and thePrefecture of Magnesia present from Greece, only two representatives,because we were very hesitant in the beginning. We were not eager to workwith this new attitude. Therefore, we had to reverse the concepts that weknew up to that time, and we had to accept the fact that development needsinfrastructure projects as well. We needed a lot of years of work for the local


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authorities, and I think that in the last years very important work has beendone. We have had a lot of bureaucratic problems, the Regional OperationalProgrammes, the territorial pacts, the new terminology. We tried to examineall the possibilities, and we know what both sides had to go through. Therewere some agencies which were not state agencies, and we had hugeproblems with these agencies, because at some point in time we received anotification which did not allow us to use them, and so on �we had a lot ofproblems to go through .

What is very important is that we sat down at the same table. All of usdiscussed with each other. It is very important that the private sector now feelsthat the private actions for employment are their own case, as well, and theprivate 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 localcommunities, are acquiring a new awareness of their responsibilities, and Ithink that it is our responsibility to move even further in the third CSF. It is ourresponsibility to bring everybody in, as well. All the regions must be involved.Employment and unemployment will be a problem for the years to come, andwe must deal with this problem. And all our policies, financial, political, actionplans, will be judged on the basis of our progress in employment.

Ms.E.CHRISTOFILOPOULOU: Thank you very much, and now I would like toask Ms. Verstraete to take the floor and close this session.

Ms.L.VERSTRAETE: Merci beaucoup. Quand j'ai pris mes fonctions et j'aipris connaissance des documents de programmation pour la Grèce, je doisavouer que j'ai été étonnée du niveau de planification stratégique qui étaitprésenté, et donc on ne peut certainement pas partir de l'hypothèse qu'il n'y apas de planification, qu'il n'y a pas de programmation, loin de là. Je voudraisvraiment souligner cela comme point de départ. Cette planification d'ailleurss'est bien traduite pas seulement au niveau des plans que l�on retrouve dansles fonds structurels en tant que tels, mais au niveau plus global, je dirais, auniveau des plans nationaux pour l'emploi, qui sont par excellence desinstruments de planification concernant les mesures prises en Grèce pour ledéveloppement de l'emploi et également au niveau des plans d'insertionsociale. Donc voilà des instruments extrêmement importants qui sont là et quitracent un cadre global. Maintenant, à l'intérieur de ce cadre il y a toutes lesactivités qui ont été conçues et programmées au niveau régional, il y a les


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programmes opérationnels au niveau régional, qui, de nouveau, sont latraduction de cette planification et de cette programmation.

Je pense que ce que l'on cherche maintenant à faire c'est de traduirece travail immense qui a été fait dans les réalités sur le terrain. Je me réfèreclairement au niveau approprié pour exécuter sur le terrain ces plans globauxet pour les organiser en étapes successives concrètes à réaliser, enimpliquant l'ensemble des acteurs. On a eu ici en Grèce des exemplesextrêmement parlants, des exemples qui sont là, qui montrent bien qu�il estpossible 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 causedes règles communautaires. Nous savons tous que parfois cela peut freinerce qu'on fait. Mais ces règles sont là, on doit vivre avec, tout en essayant deles appliquer avec la flexibilité qui s'impose, mais dans leur respect. Donc là iln'y a pas d�échappatoire, on doit passer par là. Néanmoins, je crois qu'on a lapreuve par les exemples qui sont donnés, qu'il y a moyen, même avec cesrègles, 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'identifierquelles ont été les raisons concrètes du succès de ces activités qui ont étémenées et comment on peut transposer cela dans les autres actions qu'onveut mener dans le cadre du CCA en Grèce et même en dehors du cadre duCCA. Je crois que cette discussion ici, évidemment on l'a faiteessentiellement en pensant au CCA, mais il s�agit d�un concept qui va bien audelà et je pense que Monsieur Théos l'a dit très clairement dans sonallocution d'ouverture. Nous vivons cette période 2000-2006 et nousessayons de mettre en oeuvre les moyens concrets pour réussir ce défi qu'ona programmé ensemble, mais il y aura la période post-2006 où, on espèrejustement disposer de ces outils mis en place, et je crois que c'estmaintenant, pendant cette période 2000-2006 le moment de réussir ce défipour la programmation en tant que telle, pour utiliser les moyens qui sont ànotre disposition, mais surtout pour préparer le terrain et pour préparer cettefaçon de travailler en partenariat, en dialogue � comme cela nous a étéprésenté ici a plusieurs reprises aujourd�hui� et pour disposer d�une basesaine pour l'avenir et pour développer les actions qui succèderont à laprogrammation 2000-2006. Voilà les messages les plus importants que jevoulais vous communiquer.


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Ms.E.CHRISTOFILOPOULOU: We thank Ms. Verstraete for this. Inconcluding, 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 themeasures of human resources and employment, we will see that planning isindeed very serious. It is quite homogeneous where it is needed, but it alsooffers the possibility to promote the local element. This local element can berevived through the measures that we have planned. So right now we havenational and regional programmes at a crucial point, that is, the point wherewe need to network these Regional Operational Programmes, and the finalinstitutional tools have now been completed. We need to have a technicaldialogue between us. All this is very new for us, for the managing authoritiesas well, so we need to have a dialogue on the technical level. However, thebasic point is that this dialogue, which has already started, when we startednegotiating the CSF and the regional programmes � we need to restart thisdialogue now, in a different way, so as to start to revive this initiative throughthese very well-planned and organised plans at the local level.

I would like to say that the minutes of this conference are on theInternet, 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 .

http://www.ee.gr/

http://europa.eu.int/comm/regional_policy/country/overmap/gr/gr_en.htm


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SESSION 2:�Innovation and the information society in the Regions�

Mr.R.SHOTTON: OK, ladies and gentlemen. Let�s try to start. So welcome tothe graveyard session. Our first speaker is from a sparsely populated area, sohe�s accustomed to this situation. And it�s Mr. Jukka Teras, and I�ll invite himto tell us about the co-operation between northern Finland and northernSweden. Mr. Jukka Teras, please.

Mr.J.TERAS: Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Jukka Teras, and Ireally come from a sparsely populated area, from the northernmost part of theEuropean Union. I thought it would be good for everybody to have a look atthe map before we start. Here you see the map of Europe, not all of Europebut at least you can see the northernmost part of Europe and you can see thered sign pointing to Luleå, which is the, I would say, capital of northernSweden, the northernmost part of Sweden, at least. And on the opposite sideof Luleå there is a city called Oulu on the Finnish side, and that�s the majorcity on the Finnish side. And you can also see Helsinki and Stockholm; theyare southern centres which dominate the economic development in Finlandand in Sweden. You can also notice that Norway is close to Finland and wehave a long border with Russia, too.

And now let�s get to the topic of today. Northern Finland and northernSweden regions form the northernmost part of the European Union, and wehave far less than one million inhabitants there; actually we have less thanhalf a million inhabitants in this big region close to the Arctic circle. We havelong distances, we have Arctic conditions. I can mention that we have the firstsnow all over Finland already, and it�s this much in the Helsinki region, too. Ihave done some cross-country skiing already this year, so it is Arctic even inthe Helsinki region, not to mention the Arctic regions. But I think it might beone of the reasons why companies like Nokia have succeeded quite nicely inthe northernmost part of the European Union, especially Finland. It�s so toughout there that people have to do something to survive, and so they inventedthe mobile phone.


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Back to the theme of today. Finland and Sweden are newcomers forthe European Union. We joined the European Union only in 1995, so the lastprogramme period was the first for us. So it�s something new for us, andinnovative actions such as this RIS exercise was the first one in Finland andSweden, and after discussing with representatives from the Commission wedirectly took the hard part and did it cross-border, Finland and Swedentogether, up there. We think we have a world-class technology in the fields ofinformation and communication technology, not only because of Nokia butbecause of some other technology companies. We have universities in Ouluand Luleå, but then we also have high unemployment and we have longdistances, as I mentioned. Also a dominant feature is the key role oftechnology parks. We have been discussing already today aboutpublic/private partnerships, and I think the link between the public sector andthe private sector has been the technology parks. The biggest ones are fromOulu and Luleå, but there are also technology parks in smaller cities. And thatwas one of the ideas behind our RIS exercise, to radiate the know-how fromthese bigger centres to smaller centres, and even cross-border.

Some words about the RIS northern EU working process. The projectwas headed by the steering committee, where we had the representativesfrom the private and public sector, and from Sweden and from Finland. Andalso we had active representation from DGXVI of that day, nowadays DGREGIO. And we have at least two people here today who were active in thisproject. We have Mr. Shotton, and then we have Professor Lacave from ourteam. The idea, first of all, was this bottom-up approach. We wanted to getideas from the companies, from the local decision-makers. At the same timewe had a top-down approach from national and EU sources, which alsodirected us .

In Finland people are known to do things first and then make astrategy. I think we partly did that in our exercise, but we also did a strategyplan. So I think we did parallel efforts, and I think it might be a good idea, sowhen 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, practicalefforts, and test your strategy from the very beginning. We have followed theRIS methodology from the Commission, but I remember 1995 and 1997,when we didn�t know too much; we didn�t have any tradition from theEuropean Union. We had advice from consultants and the Commission, but


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we also had to do the pioneering work with this project. The practical workwas delegated to technology parks, which played a key role, as mentioned.So the regional councils made the contracts with the Commission, but theday-to-day work was delegated to these leading technology parks. And I thinkthat was a good thing, because then we could combine all the know-how andknowledge and, for the practical things, we had good machines fromtechnology parks with experience from projects.

As for major results from this 18-month exercise, first of all it was thefirst time we could do an in-depth evaluation of the whole region of northernFinland and northern Sweden. There is a language barrier which also has tobe remembered. In Finland people speak Finnish; in Sweden they speakSwedish. Only a few people speak each other�s languages. Of course we tryto get on with English, and the Finnish should be good at it, but people areafraid of using foreign languages in Finland, so we had some startingproblems. 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 methodologyfrom the theoretical papers has become practice for us and has helped useven 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 getconfused because we have used the word �Trip� there, because it was anRIS project from �97 to �99 which invented this cross-border Multipolisnetwork, and we had a follow-up project called Trip which implemented it. Ihope you can see that there are centres of knowledge in both countries, andthe leading centres you can find are from the Oulu region that�s calledTechnopolis, and from the Luleå region this one, Aurorum. Oulu has a bitmore than 100,000 inhabitants; Luleå has 70,000 inhabitants. We have alsosmaller concentrations of know-how in smaller locations, not necessarily witha university, perhaps a technical college. So they don�t have all theingredients for a perfect technology park. But now we think that with thisMultipolis network we can get them to co-operate with each other. So now wehave Oulu and Luleå cooperating with these smaller centres. One could askwhy. Why does Oulu need the smaller centres? And one reason might be thatbecause of the dynamic development of the ICT sector there was a shortageof labour in Oulu in the late �90s and there weren�t enough good people in allof the region, so they had to co-operate with the smaller centres. And it was of


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a great help to companies like Nokia to find qualified people close to theplaces where they operate; the people were happy, too. They didn�t have tomove, and there was this stability of jobs also.

What has happened with this Multipolis project? We started with thetheory, but between �97 and �99 we were organised in both countries and nowthis Multipolis organisation is living its own life. And the most important fact isthat we have people attending the seminars. We have people in bilateralmeetings, and people from these smaller Multipolis centres are reallydiscussing. And it seems that in a moment we can jump away, which is agood 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 northernNorway, because we don�t have the critical mass in northern Finland andnorthern Sweden. So we have to broaden the network, so that might be thenext step for us.

At a national level this has been well accepted, this Multipolis ideafrom northern Finland and northern Sweden, and especially the national frontsin 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 asthe best national innovative project in 2001 in Finland, even though the ideawas invented in 1999. So it took two years for the national machinery to findout that this might really work. So we are proud of this recognition fromnational sources.

Some words about the longer-term effects of this RIS/Northern EUexercise. We think in northern Finland and northern Sweden that this hasbeen one of the most important tools for regional development and it is uniquefor cross-border regional development. It is so easy, or at least easier, to haveregional development projects inside the country, but now we can co-operateacross the border, too. And we have people travelling from northern Finland tonorthern Sweden, so we have traffic there and people moving. The Multipolisnetwork, as I said, is recognised, but also on the practical level we have awin-win situation between the bigger centres and smaller centres. And wethink this is a basis for future cross-border co-operation. We have the nextproject in the pipeline, it is called the NEO, Northern Enterprise Operations,where we are trying to co-operate with the EU initiative INTERREG IIIA, andwe hope to get a decision for that. In that way we would get an instrument to


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include even northern Norway in the picture. And you have to remember thatNorway is outside the EU, so we think it will be an interesting experience assuch 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 Helsinkiand Stockholm. We are not out of problems, not at all. But we think this mightbe one instrument that could carry on for the programme period 2000-2006. Atleast people have more hope and an instrument to work with. Thank you.

Mr.G.PAPAKONSTANTINOU: Thank you very much, Mr. Teras, for yourpresentation. Before I give the floor to the next speaker, I would like to say afew words. These are very important elements for the Greek experience aswell. The first element was the element of interregional development, orinternational, trans-state coordination, since we have cross-bordercollaboration in this project. We also have similar actions in Greece, and it isvery interesting to see the details of these cross-border programmes. Asecond interesting point is the mixture of the type of participation. This is veryinteresting, and I think Mr. Teras could give us more details on thisparticipation. And the third point is financing, private and public financing. Itwas a catalyst, and I think now it has acquired a life of its own. Such an actionacquires a certain momentum at a certain given moment, and it is veryinteresting to see how this momentum is acquired. These are a few thoughtsthat came to mind during your presentation.

Now let us go on to the next speaker, who will speak about innovationin the region of central Macedonia.

Mr.I.VASSALOS: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I will try and presentinnovation in the region of central Macedonia. Allow me to say a few words oninnovation 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 contributeto innovation. They are human resources, the creation of new knowledge, thetransfer 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 intoaccount we will not have effective action.


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Now, coming to the region of central Macedonia in northern Greece, asthe previous speaker said, it is necessary for every region to have a regionalapproach to policies. In my opinion, it is necessary to aim at producingemployment, to aim at creating new jobs. The population in central Macedoniais 1,700,000 and it accounts for 16.7 per cent of the population of the whole ofthe country and for 17.2 per cent of the labour force; 24.8 per cent work in theagricultural sector, 30 per cent in industry and 45.2 per cent in services. It is aregion with high tourist potential, with the archaeological sites of Vergina, theByzantine Museum in Thessaloniki, among others.

Innovation should lead to the generation of a unique product, of aunique service, which will have continuity. In central Macedonia, we haveworked with RTP, RIS plus and RISI. They were co-ordinated by the AristotleUniversity of Thessaloniki, and more specifically the URENIO group with Mr.Komninos, the professor who is in charge of the two studies. The University ofMacedonia was also involved, the National Centre for Research andTechnology, the professional chambers and associations, developmentcompanies and some consultants and consultant firms, and all of theseimplement innovation programmes nowadays. And all these agencies makeup our network in Thessaloniki, in central Macedonia, so that our region canbe recognised as a centre of excellence.

I couldn�t possibly mention everything that has taken place in centralMacedonia in the 15 minutes of my presentation. However, I would like to giveyou an example of how three policies are being combined. This is anexample of a project, which was supported by the region of centralMacedonia, by the European Commission and by the General Secretariat forResearch and Technology. At the same time, this project gave the opportunityfor new investment, which was very productive � I hope that you will agreewith 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 specificaims. Therefore we wanted to develop technology and transfer technology,because we can't have knowledge without the mechanisms for the transfer oftechnology. And finally and thirdly, support to enterprises. In ourTechnological Park of Thessaloniki, we have tried to create an incubator fornew enterprises, and we have also tried to support actions for innovation. The


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three pillars for our Technology Park in Thessaloniki are the following:research, technology transfer and enterprises. The results were that weinvested EUR13 million from 1992 up until now. We have created aninfrastructure of approximately 10,000 square meters, 250 jobs have beencreated, and the Technology Park of Thessaloniki is now recognised as acentre for development in the region of central Macedonia.

Some examples of the results of our action: The Institute of Techniquein Chemical Processes has been recognised as a centre of excellence, andthe same goes for the Information Technology Centre. The Technology Parkin Thessaloniki, along with its management company , is implementing a lotof actions. I will not list all of these actions, because I don�t have the time. Thisis an innovative project, and any innovative project includes the mechanismsthat transfer knowledge, and knowledge can be generated in any placearound the world.

A project of this scale cannot only have a regional dimension; it mustalso have an international dimension, and the Technology Park inThessaloniki is now an innovation centre linking the Greek government withinitiatives by the US government. It aims at becoming an innovation centre forthe whole of the Balkan region. With the RIS plus and the RISI, we have theambition to link our initiatives with international initiatives. Our incubator fornew businesses houses ten firms, mainly information technology and softwarecompanies. Our technology park is not an impressive one. You may haveseen other more impressive parks. The Tagus park in Lisbon started in thesame year as ours, and it now has 150 companies, 150,000 square metersand 4,500 personnel. We could not suggest that we can be compared withthat scale of technology park.

How can we remedy this small delay in action? A suggestion hasbeen, 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 businesseswhich were successful during the second CSF, and all of these actions mustbe included in an integrated programme. We could create virtual researchinstitutions in the future, that is, institutions which will work through theInternet and will provide services throughout the world. We already have a BPInstitute, such an institute, that is, in our technology park. It only has a


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turnover of one million dollars annually, but it has only just started. We mustalso continue with e-learning activities and with e-partnerships, that is,partnerships with companies on the European level, and these partnershipscould be very fruitful. Companies in central Macedonia could also worktogether with other companies throughout Europe. Our region must support itsresearch capacity, and this goes for our technology park and for theUniversity of Thessaloniki. More than 3,000 projects have been implementedby the University of Thessaloniki. They now have the know-how and thisknow-how can be disseminated through a mechanism, provided thenecessary infrastructure is present.

A major problem for central Macedonia is the lack of space for newenterprises. We now have 11 companies; there are a lot of multinationalcompanies from Germany, from the US, who would like to be located inThessaloniki, but unfortunately we don�t have the space. We don�t have theinfrastructure with high-capacity networks, and so on. However, only thiswould not be sufficient. A lot of agencies must work together in order tocreate the infrastructure for such a technology park.

Now, what will our way forward be? I think that innovation has alreadytaken the right path. We have proposed a new project to the EuropeanCommission. There are already two more projects, and we hope that withthese new projects we can promote innovation in our region. However, ourstrategy aims at employment. At the present moment, I believe we have thecapacity to generate employment in central Macedonia. We need the supportof the region, and we need access to international markets.

Our system needs to be improved, however. We already have calls forproposals, open tenders, but I think that the evaluation system must bemodified. We must follow the practices followed by the General Secretariat forResearch and Technology. We need assessment committees made up ofindividuals who may come from outside the region. Those of us involved inEuropean Union programmes know very well that we need evaluation andmonitoring. We need ex ante evaluation, a mid-term evaluation and ex postevaluation. All agencies must be involved in local development. Theinnovation network promoted by the region must be supported by all theagencies, and we must also mobilise the private sector. This is a majorchallenge.


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How do we see our future in Thessaloniki? The agencies for thedevelopment of collaboration projects, including the University of Thessaloniki,some research centres, associations such as the Confederation of Industryand so on, and mainly the private sector, must be mobilised, not only in orderto develop the Technology Park of Thessaloniki. No, we need the creation of aTechnopolis, which will include a network of regions, and the network ofregions will encompass incubators for enterprises, for both the private andpublic sector. The private sector must be convinced. We need venture capitalbearing a certain risk, because it is necessary for innovative investments. Inthis way, we will manage and develop new enterprises. We already have veryencouraging results in Thessaloniki and northern Greece in general. We mustassist in the setting up of new businesses. The policies that are beingadopted now do not include starting new businesses. For the time being, wehave 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, notonly through venture capital but through some people, professionals, whoneed a new entity where they can work and develop.

But development of new technology is the key. This is why I suggestedthat we improve the research fabric. And finally, new technologies mustimprove the competitiveness of enterprises, and in this way they will assist thebusinesses in central Macedonia to acquire access not only to the Greekmarket but also Southeastern Europe and other places around the world.

Here you can see that in 1992 we inaugurated our technology park. Itwas completed in September 2000. Future actions will take place morerapidly, I am certain. Thank you very much.

Mr.G.PAPAKONSTANTINOU: Thank you very much for the presentation. Afew words before I give the floor to the next speaker. An interesting subjectthat arises and I think we need to discuss it a bit further afterwards is thisdifferentiation that you have shown in the number of enterprises in ourincubators and the corresponding number in other countries. What are theinhibiting factors that make us have ten companies here, whereas in othercountries they have more than 100? Are these inherent features of the Greekreality? Do they have to do with the institutional framework? Are they relatedto universities and the market? Do they have to do with more focus on many


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of these infrastructures than we established in the universities? and a seriesof other factors. These are points to be discussed.

I will now give the floor to Mr. Orphanoudakis who will talk about theinformation society in the region of Crete.

Mr.S.ORPHANOUDAKIS: Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, I�d like to thankthe organisers of this workshop for the opportunity to present the experienceand the prospects of a great effort that has been made in the region of Creteto develop the information society. It has been a large scale effort and a greateffort as far as time is concerned and I hope that this expertise, thisexperience, will be useful to other regions, which start their efforts today orhave started their efforts recently.

This effort started seven years ago approximately, in 1994, with avision that we had then to develop the region of Crete as a model region forthe information society and to become a centre for telecommunications andtelematic services. Already it was an important telecommunications node inthe southeastern Mediterranean. What was missing were the services. So westarted planning this project, which, as we will see later on, took some yearsto mature. However, the effort had already started then, in very many waysthat I will try to briefly present to you.

First of all, our general objective was to offer services that support theincreased mobility of citizens, and which serve a variety oftelecommunications demands. The objectives were complete access whenneeded and access to information expertise by all. And I stress this; by all,because this is something that we have to face, absolutely. And thedemonstration fields for the information society had to be selected on thebasis of some criteria such as: Readiness and maturity of certain objectivefactors and existence of knowledge, know-how and ready-made technology.We could not start, in �94, to talk about the information society by starting aresearch effort. Readiness of certain subjective factors, for instance readinessof the scope of implementation and readiness of users to accept theintroduction of new, advanced forms of telematic applications, and certaincriteria of an economic nature: creation of new jobs, support of local economicdevelopment, etc. All this on the basis of a parallel effort to upgrade thestandard of living of the citizens, something that Crete badly needs, as many


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other regions do, actually. The existence of technology and know-how, andthe hope that Crete was in a position to support this vision, was based on thefact that Crete in only a few years had become a research and technologicalevolution centre, with two universities in three different cities, technologicalinstitutes and the Foundation for Technology and Research with manyInstitutes, as you can see on the slide. This foundation had a very importanttechnological basis.

So on the basis of these criteria, we selected three fields: Culture inorder to develop telematic services to manage and preserve the culturalheritage, involving many, many agencies, with common actions involvingCyprus and the office of the Alexandria Patriarchate in Athens as externalpartners. Public administration, aiming at information for the citizens, and alsoorganisation of the material of the region of Crete in electronic form, in orderto support information for the citizens. And finally health: that was the thirddemonstration field for the information society. Development of telematicservices, for instance tele-cardiology, development of pre-hospital emergencymedical services, and a series of other health services, for instance the MISfor primary health care, the integrated system for hospitals which isconstituted by many autonomous IT systems, which constitute this informationsystem for hospitals, for secondary and tertiary health care, and thedevelopment and implementation of an integrated electronic health recordthat 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 electronichealth file that exists internationally. There are also some additional value-adding services. All these services support continuous health care, whichwas our original objective.

So for these three sectors we developed telematic networks of culturalapplications, a network for public administration which involved the region ofCrete and 12 selected municipalities, and the Hygeianet, that is, the integratedtelematic services network for health.

Now let me come to our experience and some general comments. Firstof all, as regards the infrastructure development strategy for the informationsociety, one should go from the general level, that is, the generalinfrastructure for telecommunications and computer science, up to the mostspecific one. We have all those levels here. The comment pertains to the


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bottom level, that is, the general infrastructure where our initial objective wasto achieve economies of scale and scope. This is something that we have notachieved. The difficulties were quite objective, each sector has its own plans,and when one tries to develop the information society with an integratedinfrastructure in order to have economies of scale, one comes upon manyobstacles. And this is something that we should pay a lot of attention to in ourcountry.

On infrastructure, it has been said that the convergence of information,telecommunications and mass media technologies, which is guided bytechnological development, is a process of change which relies on theconditions for application and use in order to achieve implementation andeconomic results. We need to have a development strategy for the regionaland of course the national IT infrastructure. We need to have a strategybecause increased expenditure is being made on actions for the informationsociety. Until recently there has not been a global strategy or knowledge as tohow we are going to spend this money. Today we start having such astrategy, or in some cases there is a strategy and what remains to be seen ishow we are going to implement this strategy in practice. This national strategyis necessary in order to determine goals and in order to determine theNational Action Plan. However, it is a strategy that needs to respond to thedemands 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 tobecome compatible with the environment of today. We need to form aframework that will ensure the collaboration between the private and publicsector. The principles must be, first of all, to ensure interoperability, the use ofopen models and the definition of open, expandable architecture, in order tohave high-quality services and in order to create the critical mass which isabsolutely necessary in order to proceed with the development of theinformation society, as most of us dealing with the information society imagineit. And we need to have an evolution by the existing ICT, offering newcapacities. We need to go from the overall network to the regional, to thenational, and then to the European or even global.

It is important, as I already said, to have a collaboration between thepublic and the private sector, and this collaboration can ensure both thedevelopment and the acceptance and inclusion of the technologies of theinformation society. At the same time, this collaboration creates possibilities


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for investment by the private sector itself. All the money in the informationsociety is not enough to develop the information society. We need to haveinvestment, and in this we need to involve the private sector. However, theprivate sector must think about it very seriously and must be ready to respondto the challenge. One thing is certain, that there are roles for all of us � for all,for governmental and non-governmental organisations, fortelecommunications organisations, for Internet providers, computer sciencecompanies, roles for those who create electronic content and for those whoprovide it to others, that is, those who issue it and those who place it on theWorld Wide Web. And for service providers, for the manufacturers of terminalsand the application designers. And of course there are roles for all users, forall of us. However, where we have roles for all, we need to clarify, to definethese roles, in order to proceed to the implementation without conflict orduplication. As regards services and products, the services must meet the realor future or imaginary challenges or demands of the users. We cannot bebased only on today�s needs; we must imagine what the needs and thedemands of tomorrow will be, after five years, because it is on the basis ofthese demands that we will determine the services. These services lead to thedevelopment of new products, the products support new services, and themarket is opening up, produces results and is successful.

Mr. Teras mentioned the fact that usually we start bottom-up and thenwe make the strategy. I think this is a very good model for what has happenedin 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 iswhy we developed our own strategy, in the best way we could, in the mostappropriate way we could imagine. We took a risk, because this bottom-upapproach quite often fails in leading to success and to the necessary reviewand redesigning process. In efforts such as the one in Crete we try toconverge with the strategy that is being formed. Fortunately, we feel that ourstrategy of the past is absolutely compatible with the strategy of today; this iswhy we are especially happy.

Let me make a comment now, on what is going on in general, as far asthe adoption of new, innovative technologies is concerned. We heard aboutCentral 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 ofinnovative technologies, there are people who immediately adopt them and go


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on fast. There are others who follow, others who follow later on, and there areothers 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 tocreate the critical mass and make the most of people who adopt technologiesquite easily. As far as the region of Crete is concerned, we started trying to dothat some years ago, in the �90s, focusing on research and development andensuring continuity of effort. In the field of health, as you can see here, weimplemented a series of projects which were complementary. We insisted onthat very much, and as the years went by, research and development weretransformed into pilot projects. Today, assisted by research and development,we can implement the results of this research and development effort, turningthem to pilot projects, in order to see technology working. Today in Crete wehave 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 tohave it in all technological development and evolution. Critical mass needssome time to be created, but when it is there it starts growing very fast andwe start to have very visible results. In the region of Crete, we have reachedthe point of having this critical mass. From now on, what we need iscontinuity, because a lot of things reach this point of the critical mass but, ifwe do not have continuity, then we have this curve, which I hope will not beour case.

Critical mass is created also with training. We have made an extensiveeffort on training in the field of health. We have trained more than 1000doctors, nurses and administrative personnel in hospitals, in a giant effortwhich has taken a lot of time. However, it is quite effective, and what we wantto do now is be accepted by the users. There is a network of interdependenceon a more general level, interdependence between those who provide thetechnology, the users and the agencies/users. And this network must becoordinated; we need to have a policy, we need to have a strategy and weneed to see what the relations are between all the agencies involved and howthey can be regulated. Is there a healthy competition network? Is therecontinuity in funding? Are there mechanisms for communication between allthe parties involved? I think this is something that we need to see on theregional level, that is, in each region separately. Our task, the duty of all thosewho want to be involved in this effort, is to develop services that areaccessible to all, that are economically accessible as well, that have visibleand measurable results. We need to have an overall examination and


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integrated solutions, and not fragmented efforts. We need to have theunderstanding and active participation of the users, and these services mustbe compatible with the overall environment, in order for them to be easilyimplemented.

There are, however, some questions without an answer in each ISdemonstration field. The integrated networks support the provision oftelematic services in various sectors. However, in each sector when are thesetelematic services needed? What are the scenarios for their use? Who isinvolved? What is the cost? Who will pay this cost? This is something thateach 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 whobelieve that the development of the information society and the provision oftelematic services to all is a matter of technology. The technology exists, it willstill go on evolving, developing and improving, and we have enoughtechnology today to do many things. The problems are different. Theproblems, starting from the top right, are: security, certification, reliability,competition and regulatory framework issues, legal and institutionalframework and procedural issues. And there are also difficulties in thecontinuity of implementation, problems of universal access, problems ofinsufficient training and education, and I am sure that in every region there areconflicting interests that we have to overcome at a certain point.

In conclusion, I will say that I believe that the development of theinformation society is a process of change which is an evolutionary processand not a revolutionary one. We will not transform everything and turneverything upside down. We must see this as an evolutionary process thathas visible and measurable results in order to keep the effort at the desiredlevel and it is a process of change, because its development demandsorganisational re-engineering. We need to have education and training, weneed to have scenarios for the use of services. And certainly we must ensurean elementary quality of services, in order to be able to talk about tangible andmeasurable 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 specificpoints, I think, could form the basis for our discussion: First of all, theeconomies of scale. You said that in Crete you did not manage to reach that


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point of economies of scale, and I think it would be useful to talk about thesepoints now. It would be useful to see how one could reach that point ofeconomies of scale. Secondly, you talked about the critical mass, and thecritical mass brings us to the impact of all IS actions on growth. It is difficult tomeasure, but I wonder whether you, in the region of Crete, have alreadystarted witnessing that. One could look at isolated cases: through yourinstitute, 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 intoplay, 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 Iwould like to give a general framework for these three presentations. A lot ofyou come from the regions, and I would like to remind you of two obviouselements that will assist us in the discussion. The actions for the informationsociety in these years 2000-2006 are funded through the IntersectoralProgramme �Information Society�, and they are also funded through theRegional Operational Programmes. Each one of these Regional OperationalProgrammes includes an information society action. In order to co-ordinatethese actions, since we have sectoral programmes and regional programmes,we have started drawing up business plans in all the regions, and this is aprocess that is used for all the Ministries as well. It might be of particularimportance for the regions, more specifically. Now, at this stage when thebusiness plans are being drawn up, and calls for proposals are being made, itis the right moment for sound planning, in order to avoid duplication and inorder to focus on the comparative advantages of each region. And we mighteven achieve those economies of scale that we have not managed to reach inthe past.

Now before I give the floor to the speakers of the panel, are there anyquestions from the audience? Any comments?

Mr.A.SAITAKIS: Artemis Saitakis from the Technology Park of Crete. I have aquestion for Mr. Teras on the Multipolis network. Do you have any examplesof actions that have been completed involving inter-regional collaboration?

And a second question addressed to Mr. Vassalos, on the number ofbusinesses in these incubators. You made a comparison with the Tagus park


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in Lisbon. I have personal experience of the technology park in Crete. Thereare certain parameters that we should take into account. We should think ofwhat might go wrong, and we don�t have many enterprises in our incubators. Ithink that entrepreneurship is now developing among researchers and wedon�t have the institutional framework necessary that would assist thedevelopment of entrepreneurship. We don�t have implementation mechanismssuch as seed capital, and the intermediate support agencies are notdeveloped yet, because these are new institutions that have been developedduring recent years.

Mr.G.PAPAKONSTANTINOU: Any other questions?

Mr.KARAMBASSIS: My name is Karambassis from the Science Park inPatras. When we talk about innovation, I think that we should clearly have inmind that we may be talking about two different things. We may haveinnovation, meaning that for a specific region, for a specific area, for a specificmechanism, something might be new, innovative, fresh, and this mightconstitute innovation. And we could also have innovation as Mr. Vassalospresented it, that is, new technology and innovation as an outcome ofresearch and technology. So we have these two factors, these two conceptsof innovation. And perhaps this is one of the reasons why we don�t have manyenterprises in the technology parks, and moreover we don�t have technologyparks. We don�t have enough space. We don�t have let�s say the thousands ofsquare meters necessary for the technology parks. We need guidance, weneed synergies, and the concept of synergy between entrepreneurial activityand scientific activity must be promoted. We don�t want to develop one at theexpense 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, researchand in the field of universities is not developed, if we move on to a larger scalewe may finally end up with a very good business centre, but not a technologypark. 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 theregion of Central Macedonia. Mr. Papakonstantinou talked about the regional


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business plans for the information society which are under way. I have aquestion on the other regions, beyond the region of central Macedonia. Doyou have such regional business plans on innovation? And if you have notdrawn them up, or if you have not thought of drawing them up, isn�t it time nowfor 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 colleaguesfrom the other two parks have given the answers, I think. Technology parkshave not developed in Greece in the same way as the Boecillo in Spain, oftwo million square meters, or the park that was mentioned in Portugal. Westarted on an initiative of the Institute for Research and Technology, and westarted with the technology parks in Thessaloniki, Patras and Iraklion in Crete.The reasons why these knowledge-intensive companies and technology parkshave not developed are well known in Greece. We have received applicationsfrom 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 haveplanning possibilities, we don�t have enough space, we cannot enlarge ourtechnology parks. And this goes beyond our competencies. The universitiesand the private sector could be involved. In Thessaloniki, with theTechnopolis, there is a prospect for information society, and we support thisinitiative. We are looking for areas in the surrounding regions, nearThessaloniki. This is an initiative supported by all agencies, and we hope thatsomething big enough will be created so that new companies will come andbe 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 wasEUR500,000. It was an 18 month project but there was an extension of sixmonths, so it became a two-year project. And the funding was dividedbetween the European Union 50%, and the region 50%, out of which we got25% from Finland and 25% from Sweden. And the regional councils took careof this national funding.


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The second question was about the details of participation. Just a briefcomment: we had a group of industrial leaders from these ICT sectors whowere actively participating in our work, in strategy formulation and branch-specific issues. I think this combined with, in a positive way, bureaucraticwork, 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 whenwe thought the projects would fly, then they were on their own and the twocompanies from two countries sought their own funding for the future.

Then the last comment was about the dynamics of this RIS northernEU exercise. I think there was company-specific co-operation, technologypark-specific co-operation and international networking through the scienceparks but also through the RIS international network where we activelyparticipated. Why do we think this successful co-operation will continue? Wethink that there is some added value, as long as we have the courage and weearn our success, so that we have people in technology parks answeringquestions from the region. So you must have this active secretariat in bothcountries in order to succeed.

One short comment: The national contribution was EUR250,000, so Ithink it�s quite a nice price for the national sources to contribute in order tocontinue this Multipolis network.

I�d like to use this opportunity to comment also on ProfessorVassalos�s comment on why we don�t have enough incubator companies. Inour experience in Finland we think that getting from zero to ten per cent is thehard part, to raise those companies. And that�s why there are so manyincubators that have troubles. But if you succeed in getting to this ten per centor 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 anincubator � 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 ofinterest to Thessaloniki, but it also concerns Patras and it certainly concernsIraklio. We don�t only need space. It is not a question of thousands of square


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meters. I think what we do not have, what we lack, is the infrastructure, andwe also lack the personnel for the enterprises. We don�t have the theatreinfrastructure, the school infrastructure, the education infrastructure. And if wedo not focus on infrastructure, we will lose the existing personnel in ourinstitutes. 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 differenceof view between those who feel that EUR500,000 is a lot of money and thosewho feel that it�s nothing.

Mr.G.PAPAKONSTANTINOU: Any other comments from the audience? Ithink we still have some time for questions or comments. It would beinteresting to hear what the representatives of the regions have to say on thecomment of Mr. Kolyvas on broader business plans or innovation in theregions. Ms. Zembiliadou.

Mr.G.ZEMBILIADOU: The RIS programmes were recently completed in theregions, and the results of this programme constitute a business plan for thesector of innovation in our region � yes, the region of Western Macedonia ismy region. Due to collaboration projects between local agencies, researchinstitutes, the region and all the stakeholders in innovation, we have thesebusiness plans, and proposals coming out of this programme. They have nowcome as applications for projects to be included in the Regional OperationalProgramme 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 onthe region of Thessaly. Through the fourth Research and TechnologyFramework and through Article 10 of the ERDF, programmes have beenfinanced for innovation in the following regions: Thessaly, Crete, CentralGreece, Central Macedonia, Northern Aegean, Western Macedonia, EasternMacedonia, Thrace and Epirus. And I think these have already beencompleted. Attica, Western Greece, Peloponnese and the Southern Aegean


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are the only regions which do not have a business plan on innovation, unlessthere 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 whathas been said about technological parks, lack of space, square meters,infrastructure, etc. Since I have some experience in Portugal, for instance, Ithink that there are some other ways to tackle, to cope with the problem. Thefirst one is probably to upgrade the level of industrial zones or classicalindustrial parks, and technological parks providing services to the companieslocated in the industrial areas. I think this is a proper strategy dealing with theproblem of infrastructures, upgrading the level of infrastructures and deliveringservices to companies. Thank you.

Mr.G.PAPAKONSTANTINOU: I think there is still time for a couple ofquestions. I think we can close this session by stating the obvious, that is that,on the regional level, innovation actions and information society actions whichare not identical concepts, are the most difficult actions from the point of viewof planning and from the point of view of monitoring and implementation. Onthe regional level these actions may sometimes be turned into moretraditional actions.

We have now heard examples from many regions from the whole ofEurope and from regions in our country as well, and this has shown that wehave multiple results not only in the immediate surrounding but more widelyas well. Adequate planning is very important, for precisely all these reasons.Planning through the Regional Operational Programme for various sectors ininformation technology, employment and so on.

We will now continue with the next session on the topic of IntegratedActions for the Development of Urban and Mountainous Regions.


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SESSION 3:

INTEGRATED ACTIONS FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF URBANAND MOUNTAINOUS REGIONS

Mr.D.PSALTOPOULOS: Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to welcome youto the third session of this workshop, on Integrated Actions for theDevelopment of Urban and Mountainous Regions. It is a very, very timelytopic, a very actual one, and a very crucial one, because the developmentalapproach, which is based not only on a sector rationale but which also givesgreat importance to space is something which gains more and more ground.We have the opportunity in our country, in the framework of the collaborationthat we have had with the European Commission and also with the invaluablesupport and initiative of the Ministry of National Economy, to face the futurewith optimism, since we have integrated several actions of this approach inthe programmes of the third programming period.

I would like to present to you briefly our speakers, who will try toanalyse useful experience from rural areas and from urban areas. We havetwo plus two, from what I see on the agenda. We will start with thepresentation of best practice and experience from the mountain area of thePiemonte region in Italy. This will be presented by Ms. Elena di Bella, who isan expert in the Agricultural Directorate in Torino. The best practice andexperience from an urban development action in England will follow. Mr. PeterRamsden will be the speaker, who is an expert in the New EconomicFoundation in London. Then we will have the experience from Greece, andwill have two interesting presentations, first by Ms. Asimakopoulou , Directorof the Egnatia Foundation in Epirus, and by Ms. Lazari from the DevelopmentCompany of the Municipality of Patras. I also come from Patras, from theuniversity of Patras, but I would like to assure you that the presence here oftwo representatives from Patras was not intentional.

Let us start with Ms. di Bella. Piemonte is a geographical area whichhas one of the highest per capita incomes in Europe, if not the highest, whichmeans that we can learn a lot from their experience and the practices thatthey 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 havefour levels of planning. The first level is the government, the second is theregion, the third is the province and the fourth is the municipality.

I must say, to begin with, that in the rural and agricultural sector therole of the regions and provinces is very, very important. We can say that inagricultural and rural development the role of national government does notexist in the sense that the planning, the policy and also the funds come mainlyfrom the regions and from the provinces. Since 1972, the national governmentin Italy has decentralised all the agricultural competencies and ruraldevelopment competencies to regions, and recently, with the law calledBassanini in 1998, a part of these competencies passed from regions toprovinces. We don�t have the same framework in employment policies, asmost member states in Europe, where the competencies are nationalcompetencies. In Italy, the competencies are regional and at the county andprovincial level. This is very important, because we can really plan ourdevelopment at the local level, because the law gives us this opportunity. It issomething very, very important.

I will only give a little data about mountain areas in Italy, only to showthat in Italy the surface of mountain areas is 54 per cent. This is important asit is in Spain and in Greece. In France, for example, the mountain area is nomore than around 20-30 per cent. In Italy, the mountain area is very importantin terms of inhabitants and in terms of agricultural area. This is a map showingmy region, the Piemonte region, and in this map you can see how weorganised, at institutional level, the development of mountain areas. These 46areas � 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 havethe Comunità Montana Val Pellice. It is one valley in our region, and tendifferent communes belong to this Comunità Montana in the same valley.They share the same geographical situation, cultural situation, with the sameidentity 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 thecomunità montana, we can plan at a different level than the municipality, so


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we have an institutional level that is very efficient, because it is working andplanning at a real local level, at a level that is taking into consideration thecultural difference and the cultural identity of a valley. That is very importantfor a mountain area.

I tried here to show how local communities, comunità montane,communes, territorial pacts � I will talk about these later � and counties andprovinces are planning their development in rural areas, in mountain areas.We have different collectivities dealing with different financial tools, but notonly financial tools, with different tools of planning. We have, at the top � andI put them at the top because this is the hierarchy � the rural developmentplan that is very important for rural development, planning horizontal,transversal actions. But regional planning must be taken into account; if theregion planned similar actions in rural areas, the local community mustaccept it, and they cannot negotiate it. And even provinces that hadcompetencies in agricultural policies were not allowed to negotiate this ruraldevelopment plan with the region although this plan is one of the mostimportant tools for planning our future, to 2006 at least. This is an issue thatmust remain at the top.

Also territorial pacts at a financial level have been very importantinstruments. Because in the territory of the Province of Torino we have sixterritorial pacts, we have six groups of people, private and public, that arenow really a sort of laboratory for decisions, for planning and for theutilisation of different financial resources. They are really working in a bottom-up way, using a partnership method. For agriculture, territorial pacts don�tprovide much finance. So far, we don�t have any money from territorial pactsfor agriculture, and the problem is that territorial pacts are the tools tonegotiate, to decide, to give to local people the tools to plan their future, butso 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 realinstruments, real tools, for local communities to plan their future. I put them onthe same level as local community, and the two arrows picture the interactiverelationship, because this is a level where local communities can reallynegotiate their future with regions and with cross-border realities.


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Unfortunately they are instruments that are not so strong financially, but theyare instruments that offer local communities a real possibility to plan .

On the left side, you have the plans that our province in particulardecided on a pluriannual basis � I mean from this year to 2004. We haveplanned three different strategies in agriculture, one for organic farming, onefor valorisation and promotion of wine production, and one for the promotionof food and quality agricultural products. They are the three big strategicprojects 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 actionsin the local communities.

You will see the role of INTERREG III B and III C that offersopportunity to local communities to implement some actions and somestrategies, 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 toplan for the future. After 2006, for our rural and agricultural world, this will be abig challenge. The EQUAL programme for employment could also contribute.

Now I want to present one of the two projects we are financing in theframework of the strategic plans for our province. This is an example of aproject. The name of the project is A Trademark for Sarass del fen. Sarass delfen is the name of a cheese in a dialect of Piemonte. It is the name of a typicalcheese we produce in the Vaudois Valley, in the Val Pellice Valley, wheresome typical foods and some typical agricultural products have been saved.This little project is part of a bigger project, a project called Creation ofValorisation of Typical Food and Agricultural Quality Products. Our idea is tocreate different trademarks for different typical agricultural and food products,a market label or a European label. The idea is to promote local milk andtypical agricultural products. We will improve the technology, because, as youknow, these kinds of products produced in mountain areas by farmers are notalways constant, are not always at a good technological level. We need toimprove the quality. We need also to have a trademark, at least a markettrademark, a commercial trademark. And we also need to set upcommunication activities, to get people to know about these products,because you know Turin is very, very close to this valley but only a few


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citizens know about these typical products. So we need a big communicationplan.

This is the area. You can see at the right side Torino, and on the leftside you can see the valley where this cheese is produced. The finalobjective, our objective for the agricultural sector, is to raise the income offarmers in mountain areas and also to raise the number of farmers livingthere, to stop people leaving and give new opportunities to farms and newopportunities to young farmers. The other objective is to qualify and identifythe mountain agricultural products, to give the farmers a sense of theircultural identity. That is very, very important for them, and that is maybe thereason this product has been successful, because we have found somethingthat is in the heart of farmers.

The project has begun and will last until 2004 . The partners are twocomunità montane, two groups of communes from two different valleys, 20communes, 20 municipalities and 18 farmers who are the producers of thischeese. They are little farmers and they are very few in number. And ourprovince, the Province of Torino is also a partner. We don�t use here anyEuropean or national funds. The sponsors are the comunità montane, theProvince of Torino, and maybe Piemonte region, with its own fund forresearch. Because our region has its fund for research and experimentationactivities 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 maybea European label, and to improve communication about the identity of thisproduct. This is the result that we hope to achieve.

Possible causes of failure � we don�t expect to fail. The cause ofsuccess 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 trainingactivities is perceived by farmers. Farmers can immediately see theimportance of the product, because it is a project working with their ownproduction, with the production that is traditional for them, that is a part of theirculture, of their deep culture and their deep history. Also there is anadvantage in terms of price, because this product has already beencommercialised with this name, with the help of an association called in ItalySlowfood � maybe you don�t know it, maybe you do know it. By working withthis association, Slowfood, and in the framework of this new culture, a product


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that was previously not important, that consumers didn�t know about, is nowa real fashion and has produced some really concrete economic results for aremote mountain area. The price doubled in a few months. This is somethingthat a farmer or an economic operator can immediately understand, and youcan immediately move people when the price is rising. The second aspect isthat when you introduce a trademark you defend a product. Then you makean action that from a psychological point of view defends the identity, thediversity. This is something the population in mountain areas feel strongly.They want to defend their identity, their diversity from the city, from the otherpeople, from the other valley; they are different from the valley two kilometresaway. Then this is something real that is in the culture of people frommountain areas. This then, is the reason for creating a trademark because forthem it is something that is very important, and they want to work on it. Andthe objective is very close and very concrete to them. In the short term it isvery important, too.

The challenge is to transfer those elements to other areas in Italy, inour region, in Europe. Can it be done? Maybe yes, maybe no. It depends onthe network and on the organisation of institutions. We have comunitàmontane who, in this case, are helping us to plan with the territory and withthe local people. This is very important to us. In other countries this leveldoes not exist. So maybe some elements that work very well for us are nottransferable to others. We hope that the young people will continue thetraditions and the work of their parents in mountain areas, thanks to thischeese.

I will conclude with one consideration, and I am very glad to be herewith the European Commission. There are two problems in mountain areasthat concern us. Firstly, a real European policy for mountain areas doesn�texist � 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 areincluded in a policy for less-favoured areas, for rural areas. The secondaspect is state-aid policy, because on one side we have the possibility to usemoney from governments, or regions or provinces to help local developmentwith our own funds, without using European funds that you cannot always usebecause it is not enough. We don�t have enough, because of the time, theprocedures, the difficulty of planning, the negotiation, etc. We have in certain


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situations the possibility to use our funds autonomously, as provinces, asregions, but there is the policy of state aid. The European Commission, theEuropean Union give us precise rules and regulations to respect � andsomeone said this morning that we have to respect them. So we cannot gobeyond a certain percentage of co-financing. We cannot finance certainactions, for example the creation of points of trade, or certain actions to helpwith the valorisation of products. So the difficulty for us working in mountainareas is to keep this equilibrium, this balance between the freedom, the factthat we also have to use our local resources and the fact that the EuropeanUnion gives us precise rules which means we cannot offer more than acertain level of help. This is very difficult in mountain areas, and we must dealwith the risk of the abandonment of those areas. What we need is morefreedom at national and regional and local level or to have, finally, a Europeanpolicy specifically for mountain areas.

Mr.D.PSALTOPOULOS: Thank you very much, Ms. di Bella. Before givingthe floor to the next speaker, I would like to make a couple of comments. Thefirst point I think is well known to all of you. There is a decentralisingatmosphere in Italy in general, with many differences at the various levels.The fact that there is a possibility for planning and implementation at the levelof mountainous communities is a fact that might be relevant to specificcountries and not relevant to some other countries. There is decentralisationto an important extent for important issues, and through a partnership in theexample that was presented, we saw that quality is promoted, trademarks aredeveloped, and so on. For some of us in the room, it might be interesting tonote that some projects do not require financing from the EuropeanCommunity or from national resources. This is an interesting point for thediscussion.

And now I will give the floor to Mr. Peter Ramsden, an expert from theNew Economics Foundation, one of the most important think tanks in theUnited Kingdom. The United Kingdom has a series of such institutionsinvolved in developmental activities.

Mr.P.RAMSDEN: Although I seem to have made my name in cities andparticularly deprived areas of cities, I actually came to this meeting from amountain area quite close to where Elena is working but on the French side of


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the border. And I can say that we need as many projects like that as we canget. Also next year is the International Year of Mountains, and althoughEurope has not done very much to publicise this it offers an opportunity formountain regions to really network together. This is a UN thing for the wholeworld, but we do have a lot of mountains in Europe and it will be good to see areally strong economic view of mountain areas, actually looking at theeconomics of mountain areas. And perhaps that�s a challenge to theCommission to finance something in that department.

I want to talk about economic inclusion, which is a concept we�ve beendeveloping for all types of areas in the East Midlands of the UK, which is aregion, 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 someconclusions which are more general than just for the East Midlands, becausewe think, with some changes, that this is an approach that has legs; it�s anapproach that could travel to other places and other regions.

Just in very brief terms, we have some very interesting bullet pointshere. NEF, New Economics Foundation is a think tank, which means we�reindependent of government but we provide policy advice, lobbying, and alsowe do project work and consultancy. That�s the end of the publicity, but theNew Economics web site has many publications at the bottom, on the website.

We know what exclusion is. It reduces competitiveness. If we havepeople not participating in the economy, they can't do things, they can't makea contribution to the economy. It damages the images of our region. This yearin the UK, three of our regions had major riots. People were out on the streetburning cars, throwing things at the police. Who wants to invest in a regionthat has riots that seem to happen all the time? It obviously reduceseverybody�s quality of life. Especially in cities but also in other areas, crimeand the other things that attach to exclusion are just bringing the whole areadown. And that reduces sustainable growth and sustainable development.

Just to paraphrase what Clinton said: It�s the economy, stupid! Thatwas 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 beenterprise, enterprise, enterprise. We haven�t heard very much about


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enterprise today, but unless we can transform the economic base of ourregions we aren�t getting anywhere. And enterprises are what basically createjobs and make that possible. And the public sector is conceited if it believesthat 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 torecognise that engagement of the private sector, the private sector, is theabsolute 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 thetop two European countries, member states, for disparities between rich andpoor. As our growth has developed, those disparities have grown. So we haveto do something else. Also exclusion is much more pervasive than statisticsshow. In the UK we have an unemployment level of, on average, four percent. But the real level of unemployment is more than double that because ofinvalidity, sickness or other forms of hidden unemployment. And rememberthat 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 wholeof that corporation. So what I am arguing is that the success of our work at theregional level is measured by the impact on local economies and specificallyon enterprises. What happens to our enterprises? So how can we grow andinclude at the same time? That�s the crucial question that we have to face andanswer every day of our working lives.

We�ve been working with this regional development agency which iscalled the East Midlands Development Agency, and they had this idea ofeconomic inclusion. They said, well, we�ve had this idea. Can you put someclothes on it? So we started dressing it up. First of all we had to find adefinition. What is economic exclusion, as distinct from social exclusion? Andwe wanted to focus on the exclusion from mainstream economic life. What wethen say is that economic inclusion offers us a range of regional developmenttools that can help to reverse that process. We think we have both individualsand communities that are economically excluded, and I�ll talk a little bit aboutboth. The tools include investments, skills, innovations, enterprises I�vementioned, and an old one, community economic development.


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What�s been happening in the past? Again this is a UK-specificexample, but it has some generic tendencies. First of all, local development �and this is true across Europe � had become detached from the mainstreamof regional policy. It was something set apart. It was a few crumbs from thetable, which we were grateful for, of course, but it wasn�t the cake. It was justa few crumbs from the cake. The real cake was going on major infrastructureand so on. Secondly, that infrastructure work, unless very carefullyimplemented, often fails to impact sensitively on local communities. And we�lltalk 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 CanaryWharf, three massive towers in the middle of the East End of London is a verytelling example of that sort of trend. I hope that Athens airport won't be thesame. 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 programmesthemselves, and on the European Employment Strategy, which has obviouslybeen refined over the last two years.

At the UK level, the UK has become a sort of world capital for inclusionpolicy. We�ve had more committees on inclusion that most people have. Andyou get some example with 18 policy action teams, for example, all workingon exclusion. We have a national strategy for neighbourhood renewal. Andthen 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 April2000. And just to give you a flavour, people always think their own country isthe 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 haveorganisational chaos. Apart from the devolution that was mentioned earlier,every single Ministry is constantly changing its name. We had DETR; now it�sDTLR. When you ring up directory enquiries for a phone number, they don�thave any phone numbers for government. You literally can't get them. Wehave a thing called the Small Business Service, which is supposed to helpsmall businesses across the place. I rang up; I asked �Can I have the phonenumber of the Small Business Service?� I didn�t do this to protest: I neededthe number. No one knew the number. I finally had to do five hops throughdepartments 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 sofar very few parts of it are accountable in any form or way. Only the electedregional chambers are accountable. They are not directly elected, and theydon�t have any power. The other two are appointed and are, in a sense, whatwe call quangos, which means quasi-autonomous non-governmentalorganisations. And then at the local level we have all the usual confusion ofpublic sector, private sector, bits and pieces, and again all changing quite fast.These local strategic partnerships are brand new; Learning and Skill Councilsare brand new.

So just to illustrate one other thing, although I�m talking mostly aboutcities: we have tried to devise a regional strategy that applies across a wholerange of different types of space. So we have cities, but we also have miningcommunities, which are in rural areas, we have coastal towns, and we haveremote rural areas, including a national park, which isn�t as high or as wild assome of the places being talked about here, but is still problematic in terms ofsparse population, depopulation and so on. What we have tried to do with thisagency, the East Midlands Development Agency, is to say �Economicinclusion is part of your core activity. Not a crumb off the table, it�s somethingyou do every day, with your mainstream programme, and that includes yourmainstream regional development programme. They actually only haveObjective II and that only covers part of the region. These are their fivepriorities: climate for investment which is about mostly inward investment;skills and learning; priority for enterprise and innovation, combined with theinformation and communications technology revolution, which is attempting tocapture the �dot.com� phenomenon; and sustainable communities.

But in working through the strategy, what we decided with them wasthat this needed some zing. It needed something to set it on fire. So wecreated three catalysts with them, which were intended to help achieve someeasy quick hits, because you need to have results. Even politicians can't waitforever, for results apparently, so they need something that might show withina year or two years. So we focused on three approaches: EnterpriseCommunities, micro and social enterprise and community finance. EnterpriseCommunities really borrow a lot from the Territorial Employment Pacts, butinstead 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 achallenge to DG REGIO and DG Employment. It focuses on analysis, on


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identifying potential, on helping communities to produce visions and strategiesand a whole set of techniques which we�ve developed, a toolkit effectively,around planning your local economy and engaging with it, in very ordinarylanguage, and then encouraging new and what we call diverse enterprises.So not always the simple model of the corporate, but looking at cooperativestructures, 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 aredoing around that. So an Enterprise Community is essentially a planningmodule which helps the community to get itself organised, very similar tosome of the sorts of things that Elena was talking about in the context ofLEADER PLUS, for example. And we�ve been borrowing heavily from some ofthe work by Michael Porter, who is the Harvard competitiveness guru. One ofthe things we have wanted to focus on is that really, if you�re going to get anenterprising community you have to have a market. Not necessarily in thecommunity; it might be beyond, just as the cheese from Piemonte might wellsell well beyond the Piemonte region itself and that will push up the price.

So markets, but also support services, which is where the public sectormight come in, as well as the local environment � how can you change that?And the community�s own capacity and resources, and in particularentrepreneurship. How do you encourage people to become entrepreneurs?How can you make it feel like a natural thing to do, rather than taking the safeoption of, say, the public sector?

The second of our catalysts was supporting micro and socialenterprises. Again, most of our enterprises � something like 90 per cent � arein the category �micro�, employing less than 10 people. So we�ve created amodule, again, which can reach right down into the smallest level ofenterprise. And before we did this, there was a widespread view that it wasn�tworth helping enterprises of less than 10 people because there were toomany of them. Which meant that you could never help a potential HewlettPackard, 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 whenthey�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 anincome for themselves. But again, exploring new markets, looking at the types


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of sectors that the Commission itself has identified as being the potentialsectors for action.

And finance: Finance turns out to be the biggest barrier that thesebusinesses face. Very often small amounts, and so new ways of dealing withthat, must be created .

Just to illustrate one way that we�ve been working a bit outside theloop: it was widely thought in the UK that inner cities, which are the areaswhere these riots take place and were no-go areas, had no hope, that youwould never want to invest in them, that they were not worth doing anythingin. And we�ve taken a specific action, which is called the Inner City 100, whichuses 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 successfulbusiness in a less-favoured area, and these areas are very, very unfavouredindeed. And what we have done is we have produced the first list this year onNovember 27th. A star-studded sort of cast � big profile. And we�re beginningto win the argument that there is and can be entrepreneurial success in thesetypes of areas, but it needs to be backed. And it�s this type of transformationwhich 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 areworking. 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 weidentified: market linkages, access to resources, networking which wasmentioned by Elena earlier, and of course entrepreneurship. So unless wecan act on all four of those bases we aren�t going to transform theentrepreneurial culture, especially in the poorest areas.

So this is the third of the three catalysts. I said that finance was mostimportant. What had been happening in the UK was that banks had decidedthat smaller business were too expensive to manage. They really want tohave accounts which have more than EUR1.5 million of turnover in them peryear. And so they were not only closing branches in small communities, butthey were also avoiding accounts which were very small themselves. So whatwe�ve been doing over a number of years has been to say well, there is analternative. We�ve been helping � almost using a sort of homeopathic analogy,


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none of our schemes added up together probably made more than 5,000loans a year. But their very existence challenges the banks to say what areyou 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 seaof 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 publicsector, but the public sector can have an influence, both through regulationand also through leadership and through clever techniques like this.

We�ve also designed a tax credit to work specifically in the leastfavoured areas, so that if you invest in an inner city or a remote rural area youeffectively pay no tax on your investment. That means that you get an extrafive per cent of return effectively. So if the rate of return would have been 10per cent, you would now get 15 per cent. That makes it comparable withinvesting in a much more easy area to invest in. So we�ve been planning withfinancial instruments at a very high level. Now, since Harry Potter, we�rebeginning to call it �financial wizardry�. But we think that we�re on to somethingwith 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 inEurope and is being practised extensively with excluded groups. WesternEurope�s largest project, ADI, is now lending to 3-4000 people a year to startup their own business. And in Poland, one of the accession countries, FundusMicro is lending something like 20,000 loans a year, but at an average of lessthan $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 regionaldevelopment. It should also be part of what the private sector does, becauseit�s actually easy for them to incorporate it, and it�s good business. They canincrease their markets. It connects the three pillars of sustainabledevelopment, which are environment, economy and society, in a meaningfulway. It connects top-down with bottom-up, again using all the partnershiparchitecture that you�ve seen in other examples. And most importantly, it�s the


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crucial link between competitiveness and inclusion. So I offer you economicinclusion. Thank you.

Mr.D.PSALTOPOULOS: Thank you, Mr. Ramsden. It was indeed a veryinteresting presentation. There were two or three things that one could identifywith: First of all, we have areas with similar problems, maybe not so acute asthe ones that you are dealing with in the UK, but social exclusion indeedcreates a lot of problems. And maybe it would be worthwhile to discuss howthings could evolve in the future, at least for our country, and what kinds ofareas would be touched by social exclusion, if we are unlucky enough to havethis. A very important issue is the promotion and the creation of SMEs � weknow that they create jobs. How vulnerable they are after their establishmentand why is another issue which needs investigation. Finally, the threedistinctive but complementary kinds of intervention are a very important topic,because this example shows how we can promote the development of theseareas. Access to resources, the existence of networking, etc. are issues thatwe need to see how they can be introduced, to what extent, by whom, andsince we are talking about entrepreneurship I think we could examine whatfactors 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 talkabout the experience of the Egnatia Foundation in the mountainous region ofEpirus.

Ms.A.ASIMAKOPOULOU: Thank you, Chairman. Good afternoon, ladies andgentlemen. I would like to thank the organisers who invited us today, whogave me the opportunity to very briefly present the methodology used verysuccessfully by the Egnatia Epirus Foundation in order to implement regionaldevelopment projects in Epirus. The perspective of my presentation is theprivate sector and, more specifically, non-governmental organisations.

Now let me turn to the Egnatia Foundation, which is a legal entity inthe 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 Averofis the President. The Vice President is Mr. Dimitrios Glaros, Chancellor of theUniversity of Ioannina. In the last ten years the Foundation has participated in


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projects which are funded by the European Union. Today it employs around65 people.

Now a few words about Epirus for our foreign guests. It lies innorthwestern 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 indicatorsposition Epirus as one of the poorest regions. The per capita income isaround EUR10,000, the unemployment rate around 11 per cent. In general itis a mountainous region, especially remote and isolated, with lack ofinfrastructure. However, the good thing is that there are excellent prospectsfor development.

Before entering into the details of the methodology that we are using toimplement various projects, and in order for us to understand the vision thatstarts with this slide here, I would like to tell you about the Foundation. TheFoundation is one of the three Averof brother Foundations. The other twohave contributed a lot at the regional level in Epirus and Metsovo. TheEgnatia Foundation is the contemporary foundation, if you wish. It introducesan innovative feature. The name is taken from the great Egnatia Roadproject. We understand that we cannot contribute to the development of thenecessary infrastructure for the modernisation of Epirus; therefore we aretrying to be a notional Egnatia Road that will link Epirus to the rest of the worldand 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 weimplement, how we evaluate our results, and of course certain findings whichare useful on the basis of our experience so far. Talking about developmentand modernisation, we should mention priorities, which are set up bygovernment and non-governmental organisations. They are: development ofinfrastructure, increasing employment, upgrading of services in the privateand the public sector, and certainly the preservation of the very goodstandard of living that we have in Epirus. The disadvantages and drawbacksare that we have a lot of distance to cover before we reach our goals. Thepros are that in Epirus there is a very well-preserved man made and naturalenvironment. The social fabric makes its presence felt, and we have very,very lively traditions which can constitute a basis for achieving the valorisation


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and enhancement of our competitive edges to develop socially andeconomically on a sustainable basis.

So the objective of our foundation is to support innovative actions andactivities compatible with tradition and the environment. This support can takethe form of financing, elaboration of programmes on the co-ordination or theparticipation level, and certainly information, promotion and publicity actions.We try to introduce innovation at the level of ideas, concepts, the methodologythat will be used for their implementation, or at the level of the implementation,application or introduction of new technologies. The only conditions arecompatibility with the environment and tradition. This offers us a great scopefor activity, and very few limitations, we use human resources within andoutside Epirus, know-how and IT technologies, always in the objective ofacting as a catalyst for development activities, always with a view toimplementing the various actions on a pilot level, and to having products andservices produced which are useful for Epirus. The main axes for our activitiesare, on the horizontal level, tourism, culture and environment, and on thevertical level in all actions a great role is played by the introduction of newinformation technologies.

A few words about what we have done so far. The first project was theconference centre at Metsovo, the Diaselo, a modern and model conferencecentre. Right now it is a very successful enterprise, which is an importantresource for the funding of other activities.

The portal that we have built on the Internet, the Epirus Connection, isan electronic gate to the World Wide Web which seeks to connect theexpatriates of Epirus. It employs 12 people on a permanent basis, and sixexternal collaborators. In the past we also had some similar activities. Westarted with the creation of business data bases, many among which nowconstitute the basis for the enterprise logs of the Chambers in Epirus.

A CD-ROM on cultural heritage, Zeus and Pyrrhus, CD-ROMs on thechurches in Epirus, and quite recently one of our last projects is that we arebuilding a system which aims at promoting the traditional products of Epirus incollaboration with the World Arts and Crafts Organisation that we have beenhosting in Metsovo since March. It is a world organisation with more than600.000 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, promotionactions, the use of alternative energy sources, etc.

Coming back to our topic, which is methodology, an integral part of anyrational approach is evaluation. We carry out evaluation; it is a continuousprocess. We have internal procedures established and evaluators who help uson specific issues. As a result of evaluation, we can review our objectives anddirections, and this is a very important factor for success.

In the following two slides, I just wanted to give you some informationabout the useful conclusions of our experience so far. What plays a major roleand is a major key factor for success is the appropriate methodology. Wehave already talked about evaluation. Strict project management is necessary,which is a difficult task. Mr. Vasalos emphasized the importance of humanresources in introducing innovation. One of the greatest difficulties in Epirus isto find human resources which have the know-how either at the level oflanguages or at the level of technocratic knowledge, use of technologies, etc.,people who can stay in Epirus. I found it very funny when Mr. Orphanoudakissaid 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 inEpirus?

Of course, two interrelated factors are the adjustment in localconditions and application at the local level, the pilot application. I think it wasagain Mr. Orphanoudakis who mentioned the difficulty of the penetration ofnew technologies and the readiness level. I think this is true for any kind ofinnovation. There is always a certain reaction to change. This is also a featureof the people of Epirus and maybe of mountain populations in general.

However, we tried to implement best practices at the local level, on apractical level, and we believe that this makes innovation somehow more easyto digest, if I may use this expression. As for the exchange of experience andinformation, I heard with great pleasure today that in Piemonte many of themethods they use are very similar to ours, which means that we are headedin the right direction.

And certainly cooperation with the various agencies at the local andregional levels is another factor for success. I want to believe that we have


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been established in Epirus as an agency which works with great will andwillingness to succeed. We have made a lot of efforts. Just to give you anexample, we organised a cycle of information events on European issues. Wewere ready to make a journey with our managing authority, but due to therecent unpleasant events globally, this was postponed.

Of course we don�t have a policy. We are an apolitical agency. We donot even try to influence policy. Certain complaints always exist, but this is ahuman feature, and in general I believe that the experience of our agency inthe last ten years proves that non-governmental organisations can and musthave a role in the planning and the implementation of regional developmentactions. This morning we heard a lot about dialogue. Non-governmentalorganisations have also a voice, and I think it is a voice that the governmentalorganisations on all levels and the governmental agencies, have an obligationto listen to, and they will benefit from it . Thank you very much for yourattention.

Ms.D.PSALTOPOULOS: Thank you very much, Ms. Asimakopoulou, for avery interesting presentation. Your presentation clearly shows the importantrole of non-governmental organisations in regional development. There is aframework of diversified interventions, and through good organisation and thepromotion of partnerships and through stringent evaluation, they can play animportant role. And now Ms. Lazari from the Municipality of PatrasDevelopment Company will present the experience of the DevelopmentCompany of the Municipality of Patras.

Ms.A.LAZARI: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I think you are all verytired; therefore I will try and be as brief as possible. If you need more detailson our programme, you are all invited, on Saturday, to the celebration for theclosing of our programme after seven years of implementation. We arecelebrating this very important event of the completion of our project.

Our URBAN sub-programme of Patras belongs to the Communityinitiative URBAN. You know that the Community initiative URBAN is an urbandevelopment initiative and it includes financial aid for areas suffering fromunfavourable financial indicators. The selected area of Patras, for those of youthat know our city, is an industrial area. In Patras we have a lot of industriesthat have now suspended their operations because of a de-industrialisation


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process. Therefore we have a lot of problems of unemployment and damageto the environment.

There are two big social housing projects, a district with Rom peopleand a settlement of refugees as well. We tried to develop actions that aimedat upgrading the knowledge and the skills of human resources, and supportingthe unemployed and other groups in the population. We implemented 46training actions, 13,900 hours of training and 264 trainees participated inthese training sessions.

The Centre for Promotion of Employment was set up, and this providedinformation, vocational guidance and support to the unemployed. Anotherstructure was ADEPNET, an office that through organised programmes gavean opportunity to citizens of our town to familiarise themselves with computers� mainly young people but we also have adult citizens who still have time toacquire this new knowledge. We provide these services free of charge for thetime being, and we do not plan to include them in a paying framework.

And finally another very important operation is workshops for thedisabled. From the point of view of urban infrastructure, the urban plan hasnot been respected, we have a very badly organised building pattern, andwhen Community representatives came to our city they couldn�t really identifythe roads. It was very difficult for us to include road construction projects,although these were of major importance for our area. Now we havecompleted our project, and one could safely say that the urban environmenthas been upgraded. Urban infrastructure has become more decent for thecitizens. Twelve urban remodelling actions have taken place, and twelve roadprojects have been completed. The appropriate social infrastructure wascreated in order to house all the actions that I previously mentioned. Weconstructed two multifunctional centres, and we restored the oldslaughterhouses. They are 12 old buildings which were used asslaughterhouses and will now be given over to new activities for the promotionof local products, which is one of the objectives of our project. We willorganise exhibition areas for local products, and we will also promote theachievements of the university of our town, since this is a very important factorfor development.


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The results of our programme have been very important. We don�thave the evaluation indicators for the time being, but I can say that thephysical and economic objects have been implemented to a satisfactoryextent. We have implemented Community initiatives such as YOUTHSTARTand NOW.

I would like to say a few words about the mechanisms for theimplementation of our project, that is, talk about the way in which weimplemented this project at ADEP. We are called ADEP; the Municipality ofPatras Development Company. The ADEP existed before the URBANCommunity initiative, and this is important, because a question was asked atthe beginning on how will we implement the URBAN initiative. TheMunicipality Development Company, ADEP, was already in place andtherefore we managed to gain a lot of time and we used this time in theimplementation of the project.

Our company, ADEP, was the managing agency and theimplementation agency at the same time. As the managing agency, it was incharge of the implementation of measures and it followed the timetable of themonitoring committee and the secretariat. As an implementation agency,ADEP was in charge of the implementation of the projects and actions, and itcommissioned projects, found the contractors or sometimes it implementedthe projects itself, especially soft actions of the European Social Fund.

Now, one month before the end of the programme, one could state thatwe have finally reached our objective. When the approval of these projects bythe European Union was announced, we were very happy because this veryimportant project would be implemented in Patras. But we were veryconcerned as well, because we did not know how we would implement thisproject in practice. One of the problems that we had in the beginning, and ittook up a lot of time during the implementation phase, had to do with how toimplement Community initiatives. URBAN, especially, was an urbandevelopment initiative; it was an initiative with no previous experience inGreece. There was experience about YOUTHSTART and NOW, but not aboutURBAN. Therefore, we had to find the appropriate institutional framework, andwe had to investigate ways in which we could implement this initiative andachieve our objectives.


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Let us look at the problems that we faced, starting with the planningphase. During the planning phase we wanted to design a programme whichwould reflect the needs of the eligible area. It had to be feasible and it had tobe adapted to the requirements of the programme, as far as eligibility isconcerned. The planning authority was the Municipality of Patras. Through aseries of consultations with the local agencies and the social partners, theMunicipality of Patras set the objectives and defined the projects that could beincluded in the programme. The ADEP, the development company, had avery important role to play, because we had to master all the details whichdealt with the implementation of the programme. We tried to resolve conflictsrelating to the priorities that should be assigned, and we were also theanimator, because for every single phase ADEP had to play thisencouragement role. Information was very important.

Our close collaboration with the Ministry of the Environment and PublicWorks was also very important, because the Ministry made a lot of efforts toobtain information from the European Union, for instance, and the ProgrammeManager assigned by the Ministry of National Economy assisted us a lot.They helped us in drafting the original project and the partnership that wasmentioned in previous presentations was very helpful for us, as well. Therewere some hesitations; there were some doubts, but this partnership waseffective and it stayed with us until the end of the programme. And throughthis partnership, we participated in the implementation of some of theobjectives of the programme. The human resources of the developmentcompany had a very important role. There was a clear job description for thehuman resources of the ADEP, and we knew how the programme should bemanaged.

I could mention a weakness of the programme during this phase, whichhad to do with the European Social Fund measures. There was a delay instarting the implementation of actions. We were somewhere near the end ofthe ERDF project implementation, while we were only just starting with theESF projects.

During the implementation phase, it was important for us to monitor theproject on the basis of the initial design, modify some targets and make themost of our funding within the timetable required. Human resources were also


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very important here, and the internal organisation had an important role toplay. We had very good record-keeping, and we used new technology.

We attached great importance to the publicity of the programme. Ourprogramme has a multifaceted approach, and we invited the interested partiesso that they could participate in various programmes, training programmes, forinstance, and we attached great importance to publicity, because wemanaged public money, European Union and public money, and we wantedto have transparency. We frequently reported to the Board of Directors, to theMunicipal Council. Transparency was a major concern for us. Sometimes weput a lot of pressure on the administration, and a weakness of the programmeduring this phase was the computer system that was used by the Ministry ofNational Economy. It didn�t really help us, because we could not enter data asrequired both by the regions and the Ministry of National Economy. Anyway,we used our own programme, but this programme could not be used by theMinistry of National Economy, and now that the Ministry of National Economyis asking us for this information we are obliged to enter all the information forthe second time.

During the completion phase, our objective was to have all of ourprojects fully utilised. We wanted to secure continuity for our actions. Thestructures that were created have a certain cost. Structures are accepted bythe local community, but the local community cannot finance the structures.We secured provisional financing from the budget of the Municipality ofPatras, and we are confident that we will manage and use other innovativeactions, 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 thefinancial flow of the programme. Some other speakers mentioned that as well.It is very important for the implementation agency that there be a very goodflow, so that we can have successful negotiations with all our partners,because you should not forget that the implementation agency must refer tothe local community, to the European Union institutions, to the citizens, forany delays or for any weaknesses.

Emphasis was also placed on the evaluation of the programme andthere are some indicators for the evaluation. Another Community programme,the LEONARDO programme, has helped us because, along with the town ofMarseilles, we created a method for the evaluation of ESF projects. And now


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we will have time, after the completion of the programme, to proceed with itsevaluation.

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, becausethe solutions that we have found for our problems have been very important.As implementation and managing authorities for this programme, we can saythat we have at least learned that the very important experience acquired byADEP will be very useful to us in future. We now know how to tackle ourweaknesses in any similar project. Thank you very much.

Mr.D.PSALTOPOULOS: We thank Ms. Lazari for her very interestingpresentation. I would like to add that nothing is self-evident. There aresuccessful examples and there are less successful examples. Anyway, thisprogramme was a difficult one in a very difficult area, and the impression thatprevails is that it has been quite successful.

Now please, if you want to make a comment or ask a question, stateyour name and the organisation that you come from.

Mr.C.KALOGIROU: Chryssostomos Kalogirou from the special service for themanagement of the Regional Operational Programme in Central Macedonia. Iwould like to ask the panel speaker, about what she mentioned in relation tothe implementation agency, and then the partnership scheme. I raise thisquestion because it is something that is of great concern for the next period.The special services for the management of the programmes are concernedand the state authorities are also concerned. I personally believe that it wouldbe a wrong approach to seek an implementation agency for the integratedurban development programmes. These are issues of partnerships that willguarantee the mobilization and the participation of more social partners.Reference was made to, on the one hand the municipal company whichcommissioned projects or supervised them and on the other hand thispartnership 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 wantto ask whether there were private resources in the Patras programme.

Mr.A.KALIANTZIDIS: I have a question which is addressed to all thepanellists. I wonder whether you can inform us about when the integratedprogramme for the development of mountainous regions �where the Ministryof Agriculture is involved- will become operational in Greece. I would like tocongratulate all four speakers, who made brilliant presentations, and I havesome comments addressed to Mr. Peter Ramsden, with whom I have had theopportunity to collaborate in the framework of Article 10 on micro-credits.There is a certain reluctance on behalf of the financial institutions becausethere is a rather high cost. In Greece, apart from the case of the Prefecture ofKozani, where there is a so-called local resource which supports suchinitiatives, I don�t know of any other example of micro-credit. We have venturecapital for bigger enterprises and New Economy enterprises, but we don�thave an example of local venture capital, that is local funds that will bedeveloped and will support microentrepreneurship. I wonder whether you caninform 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 theiranswers. Ms. Lazari.

Ms.A.LAZARI: As regards the implementation agency, it was an issue ofconcern at the beginning. Which is the implementation agency? What doesURBAN consider as the implementation agency, apart from the managingagency, which was described in the programming contract between the threeMinistries (Labour, National Economy and Environment - Public Works), theMunicipality of Patras and ADEP? If you had asked me five years ago, Iwouldn�t have known how to answer, but for us it finally came out that theimplementation agency was the ADEP. Within the Greek legal framework, theADEP made calls for tenders for the construction projects. The same went forthe training projects. The Vocational Training Centres submitted bids andimplemented the training actions. For the other projects, however, we didn�thave the necessary framework. So ADEP used external collaborators andleased the premises and equipment, with exactly the same managingframework that we have in the EQUAL and ADAPT employment initiatives.However, in practice, although we paid for the expenses, there was


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considerable participation of the social partners. I�ll just give you two examplesand we can discuss further examples if you wish.

First of all, we had the participation of the Chamber of Achaia. This is avery active organisation. We collaborated very closely, especially in theguidelines for the evaluation of personnel. We had a software programme thatwe used to evaluate the personnel of enterprises, and to evaluate the skills ofunemployed people, in order to assist them with vocational guidance. Weimplemented this together with the Chamber of Achaia. There was closecollaboration with this organisation as regards implementation. At the level ofplanning we had more partners participating.

Another example: the productive workshops and training actions. Forthe disabled, there is the Patras Association of Disabled People and otherassociations as well, depending on the handicaps that these people mayhave, and they will be responsible for the implementation of these productiveworkshops. The municipality offers the infrastructure. The ADEP offers themulti-function centres, and the implementation will be undertaken by theassociations of disabled people themselves.

These are just two examples of the participation of partners. As far asprivate participation goes, there was no private participation in the fundingscheme. The resources, EUR11 million, came from the Community ERDF andESF at 75 per cent, and 25 per cent was the Ministry of Environment andPublic Works contribution.

Mr.P.RAMSDEN: About when the urban and mountain programme willbecome operational, I can't offer any comment, but maybe someone else inthe audience knows the answer to that one. Soon, we would hope.

But seriously, the issue of micro-credit and local finance initiatives: Werecently conducted a European-wide survey of Community developmentfinance initiatives, and Greece is not very advanced compared to some othermember states, but don�t worry, no one is very advanced in this particularfield. Perhaps the French are the furthest forward. And secondly, we considerthat all of the European economies have the potential to think creatively abouthow 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


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there are things called the Basel Accords, which are forcing up the size ofbanks. It makes it harder and harder for a small bank to carry on existing. Andthis is threatening some of your rural and cooperative banks. But some of thislending 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 bankstatute. So there is certainly room for manoeuvre.

Another example of what you might call micro-equity is what we callpatient equity, the sort of investment that doesn�t have to have an immediatereturn, but could wait perhaps two years, three years, this certainly haspotential for development in all sorts of sectors, the cultural sector being justone of them. And as we mentioned, we are working specifically with a verylarge venture capital house in the UK to develop quite a small fund worthabout EUR60 million, which will be a nationwide fund but focusing only onsmall enterprises in the most disadvantaged areas. And we are hoping thatthat will be launched by the spring of next year. One of the big advantages ofthese funds is that they can be revolving. I don�t think Structural Funds willend in Greece, but there will be some places in Greece that are no longereligible for Objective I after 2006. If we can create institutions now that canevolve into the future, then we get far better value money for our potentialeuro, for each euro that we spend, because we can still be spending it in2010 effectively. And these are very powerful instruments, although the set-upis sometimes expensive; the running and so on can be very, very lean andvery cheap and very cost-effective. Thank you.

Ms.E.DI BELLA: I can add only some suggestions. I don�t know when thiskind of programme will start in Greece. I know that in Italy we will start theLEADER programme and the INTERREG PROGRAMME, between the end ofthis year and the beginning of next year. The Objective II programme will startthis month. We are late, these are programmes that should have started at thebeginning of this year .

Only one suggestion, I think that the important thing is that the localcommunities begin to plan and to learn to plan together. And then you canfind 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 bemuch more easy to find money. The difficulty is for all to agree on what youwant 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 ofStructural 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 moneysometimes; it is to use money effectively. And to be effective, I think we haveto 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, theEuropean Commission for organising these workshops I would like to say thatthe promotion of a developmental approach which is based on integratedactions for the development of urban, rural and mountainous regions, needspolitical will, it needs imagination and it needs efficiency. This is not ahierarchy. You can draw your own conclusions about what is most importantamong these. We need to plan effectively and efficiently. We need to decideto what extent we will decentralise. We need to promote the partnershipscheme, and we need to ensure coordination and clear-cut roles.

The experiences that we have heard about I hope will give us a betteridea about what we need to do with all those things in order to ensure theefficient implementation of these integrated actions. Thank you very much foryour 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 bygovernance and the changing roles of regional and local authorities. That wasreally 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 whathas been achieved in Greece from an outsider�s perspective and whatremains 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 andnot a lot about how. I mean that was my personal impression, so I thinkmaybe we could have focused a bit more on the real mechanisms and I thinkwe might have learned a little bit more. What we were looking at in particularwas how to do more and do it better in the existing framework. We are notgoing to change or revolutionise Greek constitutional law, even in the next sixyears.

I took this table from the working paper on the EU Governance WhitePaper. I just wanted to comment on it briefly. I think you can see there are fourtypes 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 someonewho has worked in quite a number of these countries, both in a very federalstate like Belgium, my own country, Scotland, which is part of the devolvedUK. 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�sreally done in terms of what your constitutional powers are, but what peopleon the ground, what institutions on the ground, do to organise themselves, toleverage the maximum return from the possibilities that laws and institutionsgive them. So I think we have to be very careful and very cautious when wesay that because Greece is still very much a unitary state, despite the sort ofreforms that were discussed and presented earlier on today, that you can't doas much as you can in Belgium. I think. You can do a lot, and I think a lot ofthe examples that were shown today show that you actually can achieve quitea lot, even within a relatively centralised state.

So one of my conclusions, is that the constitutional situation is only anexcuse, and not a barrier to actually doing local and regional developmentprojects. I think one of the key points that came out of Michel Lacave�s speechwas that if you are looking at the French situation, and I think that�s also anissue here in Greece, if you are decentralising tasks it shouldn�t be aboutimposing national funding priorities on the local or regional level, but you dohave to ensure some sort of sectoral coherence between national and localpolicies.

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


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example of that. Peter talked a lot about the complex situation in England.That actually only applies to England; Scotland is very different. Wales isdifferent again from Scotland, Northern Ireland, and so on. So each regionwithin a country may have to find its own system of governance, may have tofind its own way of dealing with implementing these projects, and it may notbe appropriate to give full powers to all regions tomorrow. It may be muchbetter to allow them to learn through the various initiatives and projects over anumber of years, to build up what I think, in Kevin Morgan�s paper which wasone that was handed out in the pack, is called �social capital�.

This is really about Greece and my vision of Greece. I think the localemployment initiatives were presented quite clearly and it was easy tounderstand that. The innovations I know very well, having followed the variousRIS and RITTS projects for a number of years. Then I have tried to sum upand be general on the last urban and mountainous areas presentations, ratherthan focus on what people said.

So in terms of the local employment initiatives one of the clearmessages to come out was that the planning and strategy seem to be inplace. You have the national action programme, you have the ROPs and soon at regional level. People were quite clear about that this morning. Theplanning and strategy-building has been done; what we need to get to now isactually implementing and the reality on the ground. You�ve got a lot ofinteresting experience from the Territorial Pacts; it�s a limited number ofregions that have implemented them in the CSF II, but I think it�s much morethan 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 thinkthat was one clear message coming out, that maybe 7-10 areas in Greecehave really developed this type of experience and that there is a need to do alot more right across the country.

And another message that seemed to come out of a number of theGreek speeches and a lot of comments from the floor was the sort ofincoherence between top-down national initiatives and local efforts. So moreneeds to be done on the vertical as well as the horizontal levels, in terms ofpartnership and planning.


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Issues for discussion: Again, these were taken both from the Greekpresentations and also from the other member states� experiences. How to gofrom strategy to reality in the field of local employment? There was the infernalmachine of Graham Meadows that was mentioned by the President of thatpart of the workshop.

I think maybe we tend to use and blame bureaucracy. And state aidwas another issue that was mentioned. I�ve always found people on theground to be very ingenious. And again I think the lady from Patras gave agood example. She must have listed about eight or nine Community initiativesthat she managed to get funding from. So people can make it work if theywant to. So I think blaming bureaucracy and machinery is only one, rathereasy way out. I think you have to be much more self-critical. Again, thecomments 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 Finlandfor instance, the tools for understanding the real employment situation weremissing. There was this whole discussion of disguised unemployment.Qualitative as well as quantitative indicators of the employment situation areneeded.

And a very simple point here: Are they, the private sector willing to putup some money, either for strategy or for implementing some projects? Imean 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 businessplan for innovation or the information society. Julia Tsaliki listed them all. Andit seemed that the national level didn�t know what was being done at theregional level. As someone who has worked in that field, that�s a greatdisappointment to me. But is that really the case? Do people at the nationallevel not know all the work that has been done at the regional level, and soon? I think you have to take into account what has been done, and that wasstressed, in a number of fields. There has been a whole series of actions, bothin 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


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business plans for the regions. You have your operational framework, but Ithink you need to look at the strategies that have been developed, build onthem, and so on.

What I think has been achieved, and again it�s from an outsider�sperspective who has had the opportunity to follow a number of these projects,both in central Macedonia, Thessaly, Western Macedonia and so on, is thatthere has been significant learning. A lot of that is in the public sector, butthere has been some in the broader partnership as well. And I think again thisis one of the key messages coming out of Peter Ramsden�s presentation aswell, that in some ways these actions and these projects, not only innovationbut the other areas as well, are about changing mindsets, are about changingthe perception of decision-makers, companies, NGOs, and so on about whatcan be actually achieved in the region and what are the issues that need to befocused on.

I think there is a greater consensus on priorities between regionalpeople, but I don�t think � and again, it�s a sort of external criticism � but Idon�t think there has been enough mainstreaming within the OperationalProgrammes. I think one of the good examples of that was Central Macedoniawhere the RTP was developed and the RIS, and yet the sort of innovationsub-programme that was already existing or the technology development sub-programme that was already existing was not using all its funds. The privatesector presence has been involved, especially industrial associations, but it�sprobably 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 ofNordic experience in the northern EU, they stimulated early involvement of theprivate sector by pilot actions. They got the actions running at the same timeas the strategy development, and I think that�s something that we�ve seen notonly in that area but in a number of other regions. In western Scotland, forinstance, there was another example where they actually got projects goingwhich involved business but it gave them a return. Again, flagship projects,defining one or two key projects which people believe, the consensus believeswill change things are important. And there again I think there is a variableleadership role. You can have the regional authority or the regional fund,implementing some. You can have a university implementing another, and soon. Again, I think is a sort of variable geometry of who can be involved in


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national implementation and design. Probably there�s a need to take accountof differing economic realities.

The primary sector and tourism are very important here in Greece, andI was quite startled by the figures for Central Macedonia, which I thought wasa much more industrial and service-orientated economy, and I think it�s about30 per cent primary sector. And I think only a few of the RIS and RITTSexercises, and perhaps Western Macedonia was one of the best, haveactually integrated the primary sector into their analysis.

In view of the information society, I think the speech that was given wasvery 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 publicsector services but also other people. I hope that innovative actions will makeit easier to mainstream, but that remains to be proven.

As I said, probably the most difficult item to summarise and give abroad overview of is the integrated urban and mountain regions, perhapsbecause the two subjects are so different. But I think there were someinteresting key points that came up. The discussion of the Egnatia Foundationsuggested that a sort of NGO structure can be an interesting intermediarystructure in Greek mountain areas where there perhaps aren�t the sort ofmountain communities or other types of intercommunal structures which existin other countries. Keeping and upgrading human resources seems to be akey factor for both types of regions, urban and mountain. It seems to besomething 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 issomething that seems to be common, but obviously there are very differentperspectives. And I think also that with regard to the URBAN project, a lot ofthe explanation was about the fact that an existing development company ofthe town was used, but that this did not in itself solve all the problems withimplementation. So although you do have some instruments, some vehiclesfor implementing such projects, it doesn�t seem to solve all the problems, andit may be the case that the European Union�s regulations, or is it the Greekinstitutional models, are problematic.

In terms of issues for discussion, I think one of the key points to comeout was that you have to make these things concrete for business. You had


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the Community financial initiatives that Peter Ramsden talked about; you havesort of quality labels, trademarks for food, and agricultural or mountainousareas. 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 manyrespects it�s also, I think, something that has to be promoted about urbanareas. I mean urban areas have got a lot going for them, but people see themoften as being, well, polluted, run-down and so on. I think you have to defendwhat�s unique about that area and determine what is the potential of thoseareas. And sell it, that�s the next point. Sell outside of the zone, and makesure you get that message across, not just in the zone but outside, eitherthrough marketable products or publicity campaigns and so on.

And the last point , I think, the Torino example was very interesting butseemed to be based very much on institutions in Italy. So there�s really aquestion: Can good examples of that type be transferred, or are theyembedded in institutions?

So to conclude, three or four overall lessons. One, for me, is politicalwill, and again that�s something I�ve seen change over the last four or fiveyears here in Greece, again mainly through the RIS-type activities . At thebeginning, it was very difficult to get the Secretary Generals of the regioninvolved. They were very dubious about the whole scheme. It was verydifficult 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 andinvolved 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 thelack of a regional government in Greece has not always meant a lack ofpolitical support, but perhaps � and that�s something again coming out ofMichel Lacave�s speech � perhaps some sort of great �contractualisation�could increase the effectiveness of implementation in Greece. Can we notenvisage some form of non-binding agreement, such as in Finland or so on, inthe specific sectors in order to speed up the implementation of these types ofinitiatives?

The second key lesson for me is that you need a sort of champion forthese projects. Again, that�s something in the theoretical literature; that comesback very often. The political support is necessary, but the existence of achampion, whether it�s a foundation, whether it�s a university such as Urenio


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in Thessaloniki for the central Macedonia RIS, and so on, is vital to suchinitiatives. The credibility of the champion is vital, so they have to enjoy thesupport of a wide enough group of people. I think that�s something again thatcomes back to the whole consensus-building process. I think Greece hassuccessful cases of champions. I think one of the issues that was raised fromthe floor and also from the speech by Mr. Michaelidis at the beginning of thefirst session was, within the new Structural Fund framework, will there be aneed 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 betweenyou and agreed upon with the Commission.

Peter talked about enterprises, enterprises, enterprises. I think anotherpoint that came out was networks. It�s a lovely word; it means a lot of things toa lot of people, but I think what was very clear is that you need both types ofnetworks or partnerships, whatever you want to call them. You needhorizontal ones at local level which really build the sustainable development,whether it�s in the mountainous areas or around innovation for companies andso on; it doesn�t really matter. You need horizontal cooperation to make surethat people are pushing in the same direction. And you also need verticalsupport in terms of local, regional and national ministry, in order to make surethat you're not, at the local level, pushing against something that the nationalMinistry is never going to fund in the next five or six years. It�s really wastinghuman resources and financial resources. So you have to have that sort ofcooperation, and speak in the same language, both horizontally andvertically. At local level, building networks is about trust and dialogue. Thistakes time and money, and I think, again, this is something that is not alwaysunderstood. 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 areabout human input, human dialogue. I think the Prefecture of Magnesia madethat point very clearly. It�s about sitting around the table talking about how topromote the Prefecture most efficiently. It takes time and money � humanresources aren�t free, so this is something that has to perhaps be put a bithigher up the political authority ladder. At sectoral level, and here I�m talkingabout, for instance, employment policy, industrial policy and so on run bynational Ministries, again there were a lot of issues coming out of thediscussions, and the need for some form of contractual agreement or non-binding letter or whatever you want to call it � common business plan; itdoesn�t really matter � but some form of agreement that allows you to work in


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a framework over a fixed period, whether it�s a Structural Fund period or anational implementation period doesn�t really matter again, that allows you topush forward faster and not run into roadblocks because the national level ispushing 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 haveto remember � and Peter, I think, made that point very clearly � the businessis about making money. If you're only talking about public sector interestsyou're not going to get them involved.

Last point, last slide. Tools � one of the issues for this seminar waswhat sort of tools do we need? I think one of the debates that comes out, frommy 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, theOperational Programmes, etc. which are for a defined period, with specificobjectives - is very much harder to change over time. Of course, you canmake adjustments mid-term and so on, but it�s not a process. Strategy isabout process, so it has to be updated, changed to needs, and it�s notnecessarily the same thing as a programme or a plan. It seems to me that thelevel of analysis of needs, both in terms of business needs, unemploymentand so on, is still very weak, and this is something that needs to be tackledand maybe more money should be put into that, both at national and regionallevels. And perhaps there should be more focus on the perspective analysis,and again I think, learning from the French experience, in the perspectiveanalysis that they do each region has a plan I think up to about 2020. It�s along way ahead, but it enables them to say well, this is what we think, on thebasis of a number of working groups and so on, these are issues for theregion in the next 10-15 years. So if we�re talking about an area, which is notwithin 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 withinGreece but also from other regions. I think transnational cooperation can becrucial. Knowing where your region stands, in terms of benchmarking typeprocesses, can also be crucial. Perhaps there there�s a role for theCommission in promoting such learning, making sure that networks underinnovative actions and so on are really about cooperation and transfer, andnot 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 givesome 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 aninnovation fair for the first time. They gave innovation awards as part of theRIS. It also allowed them, at the same time, to do a survey of the companieswho wanted to be involved in that fair. It gave the companies a showcase fortheir products. Everyone�s happy. You get full cooperation because you givethe businessmen something back for their time. The sort of rewards - thehundred high-growth companies in the UK - it�s an interesting idea. How manyhigh-growth companies are there in Greece and which types of areas, and soon? Expensive cheese: that�s another nice one for people in the rural areas. Ithink seriously you have to make sure that in all these strategies and all theseprojects and actions you are making sure that there is a relatively immediatereturn or interest for the private sector.

Then I think the last point, and this is really for the future but maybeyou have to start learning now, is EU/public money. Thank you.

Ms.G.ZEMBILIADOU: Thank you very much, Mr. Reid. It has been a reallydifficult job for you to synthesise and summarise a long day�s work. From thepoint of view of the regions, I would like to say that Mr. Reid has given us thebasic points, but I would like to say that there is no single recipe for the needsof each region. A lot of best practices exist, however, and these best practicesare always adapted to the realities of the regions where they have beenimplemented. All these projects and best practice examples had one commonpoint: they had a vision. And we also have a vision for our regions. And whatMr. Reid said is true, as well. On the regional and on the local level, there arestrategies and there are plans and there are projects which must beimplemented. It is the first time, though, that the regions have been calledupon to combine and use integrated projects which necessitate thecontribution of all Structural Funds and not only Community programmes butalso national and regional programmes.

Innovation is also very important, so that we can have very goodresults. The question of employment is the basic requirement for all ourregions. The territorial pacts and the new approach to these initiatives isanother feature that came out of our presentations. New technology is also abasic requirement nowadays. We must use the information society facilities.


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We must use new mechanisms, new institutional frameworks, and this is thedifficult part.

I hope that the conclusions of this workshop will be a guide for us, asort of manual, vade mecum, that we can take with us to the regions and workwith. We need continuous collaboration as well, and this is something new forthe local level. Constant collaboration and dialogue, an open dialogue forumbetween the regions, the central administration, the local agencies and theprivate sector. We need synergy between all the regulations and provisions.And we will also need to combine the series of managing practices that weare called upon to implement.

Any questions? Any comments?

Mr.N.PAPADODIMAS: I don�t have a question. If we have finished with thediscussion I can take the floor for the conclusions. We have reached the endof 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 Ihope tomorrow�s workshop will be equally successful. I would like to thankyou, not as a compliment because we have worked together for a long time. Iwould like to be very frank and thank you, because I think it has been a verysuccessful meeting. This workshop has been very successful, not because ithas led to very specific and widely accepted conclusions. It has been verysuccessful precisely because it has been, in my opinion, an opportunity for afundamental conclusion to be drawn. That is that those questions that wedealt with cannot be resolved with a single recipe or with a single model.These are constantly evolving questions. These are questions that depend onmany factors and parameters, and actually the only way to approach theseissues is through such contact, such forums and workshops.

Mr. Reid made a valuable presentation. You said that we heard a lotabout what we want to do. And we didn�t hear much about how we are goingto do it. That was a very good point, and my first personal conclusion wouldbe that we all know where we want to go. We all know that we want to go to


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point A, let�s say. We express it in a variety of ways, but we all know that wewant to reach that point. The question is how we will get there.

I have some very brief comments. We talked a lot aboutdecentralisation, about regional development, the relationships between thenational and the regional level; it is a never-ending question. Decentralisationand the structure of the state is an eternal question; it is an evolving process,and what we should know is that administrative changes and administrativereforms will never end. At the very moment when a state is implementing anew act, a new piece of legislation, a new need is being born. And this newneed creates a new environment with a need for new regulations. When welook for something new, we don�t have a complete experience of the previoussteps. This is an inhibiting factor for good planning, but it is the only way inwhich we can move forward.

I think that what has not been clearly expressed is the relationshipbetween the institutions that already exist and the requirements dictated bythe 3rd CSF. The third Community Support Framework includes very specificprovisions. There is a long series of examples and practices implemented invarious regions and countries, but we need discipline and we need to prioritiseall of them. We must have in mind the general framework. Are we talkingabout a rural development action? Are we talking about urban actions? Arewe talking about an innovative action? The situation is always different. And ifwe 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 usthat there are similar objectives and similar difficulties. The paths that wefollow and the objectives that we promote in all countries have to do withinnovation, integrated interventions, mobilisation of the local community,synergies, bringing all agencies and all stakeholders to the same table. We allwant to do that. And we have all given our own experience in our personalway. The difficulties that we face in our efforts also seem to be very similar, tobe almost identical. Starting from Finland and going down to Crete, we alwayshave difficulties related to with the central state, the local level, the privateagencies, the public agencies, the agencies that have been reformed, and soon. We all want to enlarge the spectrum of participating agencies. These arecommon difficulties. We have different ways of tackling these difficulties. And


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each one of us might say that their method has been successful or has failedin certain respects.

I have especially noted the point about small and medium-sizedcompanies, about micro-credit, and so on. Recently in Greece there has beena very important development regarding the merger of two major banks, andfinancial news globally is about mergers and acquisitions of huge companiesin telecommunications and financial deals with subsidiaries of big companies,because big multinationals want to control all the levels. You will tell me thatthis is the case on the national and global level, but when we talk about thelocal level we have to talk about local and micro-enterprises. I don�t knowhowever whether the situation is any different in Epirus or in Scotland. Wemay have common objectives and problems, but there is huge diversity in thedifferent systems, different mechanisms and different administrations that weuse in tackling the problems .

So our conclusion is that there are no models. There are no modelsthat can be transferred; there are experiences, though, valuable experiencesand necessary experiences that we must describe and observe. But I can�treally believe that I could transfer the excellent experience of Italy or Norwayto our specific local example.

There is another very important point. The private sector is notsufficiently involved, and the private sector must be included in these efforts.Entrepreneurship which is an integral part of the New Economy, was notdesigned and is not being implemented in order to serve the OperationalProgrammes. And this is a huge deficit. There is the entrepreneurshipemerging from the development of the financial policy, following globalisationand so on and so forth. This is totally different, however. Operationalprogrammes, funds and resources try to implement local, regional, nationaland Community policies. The private sector could play a very important role inGreece, as well, but it hasn�t done so. In Greece we expect the state to doeverything, and even when we give the opportunity to private individuals to dosomething, the state must have everything prepared.

We must all get mobilized, not within a new model but, along a newinvestigation path. We will be glad to listen to tomorrow�s workshop. Not onlytomorrow�s workshop but January�s workshop as well, because the topics will


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be similar and will complement the knowledge and experience that we haveacquired 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 veryinteresting discussions. And it�s true, perhaps we have not answered all thequestions we had initially. But we have had good examples of good practicefrom different member states, as well as good examples of best practice fromGreece. I must say I strongly believe we can learn a lot from these goodpractices, and I also think that there is a certain level of transferability. Even ifyou cannot take good examples and transfer them totally, I think you can takeelements from them and try to transfer those. So from that point of view, Ithink this was a very valuable experience.

Now it�s clear that this was only a start. We have just elaborated on thegeneral framework in which we work and given some ideas. We must nottake it further now. In fact Ms. Christofilopoulou has already said that we wantto discuss local employment initiatives starting on Monday to see how we cannow further elaborate the specific framework and modalities to work this out,make it happen in the different regions, and give some guidance to theregions on how to do this.

So we hope to come to you with more specific, more concreteproposals in the near future. And of course in the end it will be your job tomake it happen. So we will only give guidance and general frameworks, butthen it�s up to you to do it and to come back with results. I hope that we willhave the opportunity at the next round of Monitoring Committees to discussthis and to see if we have other good examples that we could take further andtransfer 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, andnot just regional infrastructure. And we have to clear away the alibis. We can'tdo it in Greece because of the legal situation, because of the administrativesituation. We can't do it in Greece because Greece is different. We can't do it


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in Greece because the private sector doesn�t want to cooperate. We can't doit because, because�

I think we have seen that people can do it, that they are doing it. Andwhile we can always, as Nikos Papadodimas said, always try to improve themachine, and it does need improvement � the Commission machine, theStructural Fund machine, they all need improvement -, nevertheless there isnothing to stop us doing it now, and it is an important focus for the next fiveyears.

So thank you very much. Thank you especially to the speakers whohave travelled here, sometimes with considerable difficulty, and I hope theywill travel back with less difficulty. And for those of you who are heretomorrow, we�ll see you again tomorrow. Τhank you.