Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-05-21-Speech-1-168"
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"en.20070521.20.1-168"2
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".
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to start by saying how very grateful I am to the rapporteur for her dedicated work on the fine report that she has put before us.
Like a number of others that are currently under discussion in the Committee on Regional Development, this report is one of the building blocks of a future structural and cohesion policy, and by ‘future’ I mean that, while this will be reviewed in the course of the 2009 mid-term review, 2014 will see us having to start redesigning the cohesion policy that we are preparing today.
I am very grateful to Mrs Pleguezuelos Aguilar for having brought three important points back into the debate and given them added emphasis. There is no doubt about it: the competitiveness of the European Union as a whole is one of the challenges of the twenty-first century, and, as the rapporteur rightly points out, the development of research and technology is an essential element in that, one that must, of course, also be, in the areas of cohesion policy, the basis of development, not least of the less developed regions.
Territorial cooperation is something else that needs to be put much more at the heart of our policy-making now that the European Union has 27 Member States, for urban centres, and the issue of how they relate to rural areas, constitute a challenge that we will, over the coming years, have to face with greater determination.
The third problem that Mrs Pleguezuelos Aguilar addressed – and I fully endorse the way she did it – is the requirement that we do much more than we have before for the regions that are affected by depopulation, which young people are abandoning because they see no opportunities for themselves there. The issue of demographic change throughout the European Union, in every one of its Member States, is a completely new challenge for cohesion policy, and the rapporteur is right to treat migration as a problem.
Let me conclude with a personal observation, which I will address to my good friend Paca. Paca, I am so glad to see that you are able to be here again today and to take part in the debate on your report. I speak for all our group when I say that I wish you lots and lots of strength and energy for the coming days and the coming week, so that you may come back here restored to health and vigour, ready to carry on playing your part in the work of this House."@en1
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