Enhancing networking between the Region, the capital and Brussels

Since May 2004 Poland has been a member of the EU, but its institutions till now have not  adapted to the requirements of the membership. This is true for the Parliament, which has neither changed the structure of its commissions, nor enhanced ex ante or ex post control of the government, despite the fact that now a tremendous part of Polish law passes through the European Parliament (in the so called “co-decision procedure”) and the EU Council. The same is true for local and regional authorities. Since 2004 they have been sending their representatives to the EU’s “Committee of the Regions”, which advises the EU Council and – potentially – could supply input from civil society, non-governmental organizations and other regional and local actors and could act as an intermediary and a link between local and regional interests on one side, and the Committee and the Council on the other side. However, till now, there is no indication that they really do so.

There are many local and regional actors, who would be able to provide input to the CoR and the Council, and to establish links between the regions and towns and “Brussels”: there are  members of the European Parliament and  representatives of the regions in Brussels, there are members of the Sejm’s “Commission for EU Law” whose constituency is in Lower Silesia and Opole. However, the centralized mode of delegating Polish representatives to the CoR and the relative weakness of the Polish representation in the European Parliament, suggest a lack of networking between  different actors on the local / regional and supranational level. 

The project is designed in a way that requires the input of the stakeholders (actors)  themselves in order to find solutions. It is not our aim to impose already tailored solutions to them. Our goal is to  improve the exchange of information and the level of coordination between the different local, regional and national representatives of Poland (members of the EU’s Committee of the Regions, of the Sejm’s Committee for European Affairs, the regional MEPs and NGOs and the local and regional administration). First phases of the project focus on the identification of the specific problems, second phase aims at finding a common solution, acceptable and useful for all involved and interested in a better interest representation. Then we would like to promote conclusions from the project in other Polish institutions. At this moment (October 2009) we are training our researchers to conduct interviews to assess the existing level of exchange of information between the actors.

The project is financed by the Central Eastern European Trust.