by Nanette Maupertuis, President of the European Alliance Group

The current war in Iran has once again shown how the European Union is dependent of energy from third countries.  This needs to change as ordinary citizens are being penalised with the increased costs of energy, transport and food.  Europe needs to move towards solutions where regional Energy initiatives can protect those regions from fluctuation of fossil fuels.  More renewable energy solutions, more Energy communities and cooperatives can provide some solutions to these challenges.

The current discussions on the new EU budget should also be flexible to adapt to crisis and invest in regions.  More and more we see that the Nationalisation of Cohesion and Agriculture funding is a backward step and Regions need to be in the forefront to ensure that planning and implementation of structural and cohesion funding need to be at the regional levels.  We will focus on these issues during the debates at the next European Committee of the Regions Plenary session.

Lastly to our readers I would like to encourage our young Politicians to join the CoR’s Young Elected Politicians Programme or the EU Councillors network.  By working together, we can achieve more.