New EU regions president: ‘Citizens feel left out from the European process’
Apostolos Tzitzikostas (EPP), the governor of Central Macedonia (Greece), has been elected as the new president of the European Committee of the Regions. He talked about his main priorities, which include a bottom-up approach to shaping European policies as the only way to overcome the “democratic deficit”.
“Europeans citizens feel left out from the European process and we need to make the EU institution realise that we can convey the message to our citizens only through the EU local and regional governments,” Tzitzikostas said.
“The basic priority for this new mandate is to bring Europe closer to the people,” he added.
Coming from Central Macedonia, one of the most affected regions during the refugee crisis in 2015, Tzitzikostas knows well what impact EU policies – or, in this case, the lack of them – can have on certain regions.
A convinced Europeanist, he advocates for more involvement of regional and local authorities in the decision making process in Brussels. The upcoming conference on the Future of Europe could be helpful in achieving that.
“Today there is a democratic deficit in the European Union. It’s an institutional crisis,” the Greek politician argued. “We need to have more democracy. And the people who the citizens trust the most in politics are their mayors, their governors, the president of their region,” he said.
“The union needs to realise that without us as being key actors in this process, we will never persuade the citizens of Europe that there is legitimacy and that there is direct democracy,” Tzitzikostas stressed.
“We are looking ahead to the conference on the Future of Europe as being very much involved, not for the good of the regions or the cities, but for the good of the EU,” he added.
Many of the challenges Europe is facing, from climate change to the risk of an economic downturn, are borderless but are often tackled at the local or regional level. However, the Committee of the Regions remains a consultative body and is not involved in decision making at the EU level.
The new CoR president starts soon after the new European Commission and Parliament took office. Cooperation with the institutions so far “is working well, but it needs to work better,” Tzitzikostas said.
“We need policies that would come with a bottomup approach, rather than decisions that are going to be taken in Brussels, to be implemented in regions and cities without their say, without their opinion,” he insisted.