Following hot on the heels of the Danube Strategy, which emerged following initial proposals from the Committee of the Regions (CoR) and extensive lobbying by MEPs from Central and Eastern Europe, the Spanish Presidency believes the Atlantic Arc should be the next EU focal point.
Ocean-based policies
Should it be supported by the European Commission, the Atlantic strategy would focus on policies to protect the environment and the biodiversity of Atlantic coastlines, as well as reinforcing key maritime sectors such as tourism, sailing, marine research and innovation, offshore energies, eco-activities, maritime transport, fishing, naval construction and the development of ports.
Speaking at a meeting of the Conference of Peripheral Maritime Regions (CPMR) in Gijón earlier this week, Spanish Territorial Minister Manuel Chaves expressed his support for an integrated Atlantic macro-strategy to be pushed at EU level.
Such a move would see Atlantic coastal regions from Spain, Portugal, France, mainland Britain and Northern Ireland working together, as the CPMR's own-initiative Atlantic Arc Commission has been doing since 2009.
According to EurActiv Spain, Vicente Álvarez Areces, president of the Asturias region, will now ask that the CoR convene a group to promote the idea.
These developments will come as no surprise to regional policy observers, given that Spain's State Secretary for EU Affairs Diego López Garrido declared his support for such a strategy as early as September 2009.
Too many macro-strategies?
However, it is not clear how much political capital Spain is willing to invest in pushing such a venture. With a six-month agenda that is already loaded, the Spanish Presidency may not have the time or energy to back the 'Arco Atlantico' to the same extent that the preceding Swedish Presidency backed the Baltic Strategy. Indeed, the Swedes went as far as making it a central plank of their official work programme.
CoR sources contacted by EurActiv said they had not heard of any moves to push the strategy via their channels. So far, Madrid has made a lot of noise but no action has been taken, one representative said, adding that there is such an abundance of macro-regional strategies being both proposed and implemented at the moment that it is difficult to know which to take seriously.
(With additional reporting by EurActiv Spain.)
