Last thursday, like about 500 other people, I attended the annual Regions for Economic Change "bash" that DG Regio organises to beat the drum about the sucesses of its programmes. 500 participants sounds by any standards a good turnout, but as we all know, statistics are very misleading. A quick scan through the list of participants and you suddenly realise its only the "usual suspects". There are participants from projects that are part of the programme, plus of course EC official and the representational offices of Regions from which the projects originate. It is a kind of self congratulatory show.
In the morning I decided to forgo listening to the Urbact workshop and instead experince whats going on the Interreg IVC . Regions for Economic Change is not about economic change its simply about trying to get good ideas "transferred" into Operational Programmes for EU Structural funds. To facilitate this transfer, there are projects labelled "Fast Track", which ineffect are projects "approved and supported by the EC" and thus having this extra kudos. The idea is great, "good idea" in region/city a becomes good idea in region/city B, C, D etc. Why invent the wheel when you can simply copy and paste.
After a series of breakneck speed presentations which all seemed to radiate "success", the first serious problems began to surface. One presenter opened the "can of worms" when he innocently stated that the programme was "flawed" as it did not provide any resources for implementation of new action plans developed through the projects funded. In, other words, it simply talk and talk and then words on paper. The "can of worms" once opened began to also reveal some other problems. Guido Acchlioni from DG Information Society noted that there was little connection between the products produced(the action plans, which we there to celebrate) and the Operational Programmes through which they could be funded. There was a big problem in reconciling the fact that OP's were determined elsewhere and not through such projects. In addition finding scope in 2010 in Operational programmes that had been largely "committed" by 2008, was a bit of ahit and miss affair. From here, it just got worse, or more clear, another intervention highlighted that one of the big weaknesses was that the specific focus of projects was not agreed at the outset.
In short a gap began to open up between hype and reality. Unfortunately, there was no response or indeed recognition from the intervention by the INTERREG secretariat and it just seemed "business as usual".
Those who have read my blogs about Urbact , will knwo the seriuos concerns I have about that programme. INTERREG IVC seems to share the problems.
Let me make myself clear, Fast track is a good idea in as much it has brought about a gtreater interservices working within the EC. Its also good to involve managing authorities and clearly it supports some mutual learning and sharing of experince. BUT what comes out is questionable. John Walsh from DG Regio correctly said that knowledge is not the same as information, and it seems action plans are not the same as action. Territorial Co-opration programmes are in need of a radical overhaul. There has to be a greater "bottom-up" identification of "problems/issues" that local/regional stakeholders want to address. the current "top-downward" model has given far too much power to civil servants who frankly have very little connection with the reality on the ground.There has to be a stronger commitment to "capacity building" in the programmes, right now its just an incidental spin-off. Within OP's there has to be a built-in component say 15% which is "ear-marked" to support "bottom-up" actions developed through EU or national/regional programmes.
From a workshop on Fast Track, I went to what was billed as a "political debate". The theme was EU2020. The political clout present was considerable, no less than 3 EU Commissioners on the agenda Johannes Hahn(Regional Policy), Marie Geoghegan-Quinn(Research and Innovation)and Janez Potocnik(Environment). In addition there was a member from the Committee of the Regions and the Secreatry General for Innovation , for the Spanish presidency.
There were of course high ranking civil servants from DG Regio and the EIB as well as two academics.
What struck me was that while being billed as a "political debate" there were perhaps no politicians present. EC Commissioners are clearly political appointments but do not have a political mandate from the electorate. Likewise , the CoR member was from Wales, which like the UK "appoints" its members to CoR, so again no clear electoral mandate.To be honest I do not know how these "Presidency " positions are dealt out but perhaps Juan Tomas Hernani, from Spain was the only politician there. My hunch was strengthed by the fact in response to one question from the moderator he specifically referred to 2012, which is of course ingraved into the hearts and minds of Spanish politicians as this will be when they have to face the electorate and explain what went so wrong in a country that only three years ago was being held up a "beacon" of the success of Cohesion policy and European intergation.
Sadly, it was also not a political debate. It was an old style walk on -walk -off series of prepared speeches read out by the three EC commissioners followed by academic input which if properly debated would have cast huge doubts on the validity of the prepared statements.
In this old style format we(the audience) are simply prisoners of what for all intent and purpose is low grade live TV.Infact we have no remote so cannot change the channel, nor can we intervene as no roving mikes have been forseen. We are simply there to watch and make the photo opportunity.
The form of political "style" also was reflected in the content of the debateThat is to say that all the key "buzz words and messages"were uttered. We face multiple challanges, key challenges relating to climate change, the energy crisis, financial crisis, demographics, global competition, etc. However, whilst the analysis is good, the policy and political response is seriously flawed. Johannes Hahn spoke of "Europe" needing "a new economic narrative". Absolutely right, but the new narrative has to start with the recognising that what we face is infact a deep crisis also in our political institutions. Its no longer about fixing the "democratic deficit", politics is broken.There is deep institutional decay and this is reflected in institutional inertia This factor, combinde with the others makes what we have , I believe, at a watershed in the evolution of what can be referred to as the post 2nd World war model for economic growth. The model was based on the idea that growth would “lift all boats”. That is to say that growth would reduce inequality and create greater social cohesion. For this reason our respective leaders in 2000 were able to commit the EU into becoming the most knowledge based economy with quality work AND reduce significantly poverty.
Infact, the evidence points to the inverse. We have created more low quality , low skill, insecure, low pay jobs AND increased social exclusion.Lisbon has proved in every sense to be just “bullshit”. The wreckage of Lisbon is evident and the financial crisis has simply exposed the poverty of the underlying model. It is for this reason that Agenda 2020 simply skips any kind of review of Lisbon. Instead of Coca-Cola, we are now presented with “coca-cola light”. The Greek sovereign debt crisis has already blown away any of the substantial indicators underlying Agenda 2020.
The challenge we face is that the crisis is so deeply multi-faceted-climate change(which is fundamentally a social justice issue- rich people create more carbon foot print than the poor), the fossil fuel energy crisis, politics is broken , our financial system has “robbed us” in order to prop up what is at root “immoral” .
We need a new politics and we need a new value base if are really serious and committed to tackling sustainability and social inclusion, anything short of that is simply “pissing in the wind”
There is an energy and hunger to bring about this change and the key challenge is how to engage this latent social capital. This is the political debate that needs to be had.
We are facing a series of interlinked systemic problems – consuming beyond our planetary limits; untenable inequality; growing economic instability and a breakdown in the relationship between ‘more’ and ‘better’. The only way to overcome these systemic problems is through a new politics.
I recently re-read parts of Karl Polanyi's book "The Great Transformation" published in 1941 . In it he analyses how market processes in the industrial revolution had created severe ruptures in the fabric of social life, and argued strongly that we needed to reverse this and find a balance between the market and the non-market; the private and the public; the individual and the community.
I believe we have reached such a point again and we need to generates a new politics that starts with making politics once again 'service" and not the corrupting career it has become and one that takes its starting point as the redundancy and toxicity of the current model of economic growth.
How to engage and re-engage with those swicthed or simply not reached by the current "white noise " of institutional political discourse, is the challenge and opportunity we have .
