European Governance

On 10 June 2009 the European Commission adopted a Communication on the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region following a request from EU Member States. It is the first time that a comprehensive strategy, covering several Community policies, is targeted on a 'macro-region'. These developments have instigated a substantial interest in the macro-region concept. At the last European council meeting on 19 June 2009 EU Member states invited the European Commission to develop a strategy for the Danue area.

Multilevel governance understood as the exercise of authority and policy making across various levels of government has become one of the main approaches to European integration. It is one of the key tasks of the AER to ensure that regions are involved in the different governance debates on European level and to ensure that Europe's regions are involved in the EU's decision-making process of tomorrow. 

For AER's position on Multilevel Governance click here:

The European Transparency Initiative was introduced by the European Commission in 2005 in order to increase transparency, openness and accountability of EU governance processes. AER participated in the discussions to clearly position the role of the regions. 

eGovernment is about using the tools and systems made possible by Information and Communication Technologies in order to provide better public services to citizens and businesses. Effective eGovernment  involves rethinking organisations and processes as well as the changing of behaviour so that public services are delivered more efficiently to the people who need to use them. Public administrations of European regions need to be aware of ongoing debates about eGovernment and new ICT solutions. In addition new EU guidelines present considerable challenges to all regions in Europe: from the beginning of 2010 bids of more than 5.2Million Euro can only be tendered electronically. 

Being able to fully participate in regional and European democracy requires policy makers and officers to be well informed of the workings of the European Union. The AER Training Academy is meeting these needs by providing targeted training to regional officers and politicians in two-day seminars taking place in Brussels or AER member regions.