Sógor: from the European principles of solidarity, subsidiarity and responsibility we took over even less than we could absorb EU funds
„In the last 20 years one of the main problems in Romania was the excessive centralisation. We have to create the possibility for more and more decisions to take place at regional and local level, because in the lives of communities central decision-making is ineffectual” – declared Csaba Sógor, DAHR’s member of the European Parliament at the event entitled The regionalisation of Romania – Why? organised by the NGO Academia de Advocacy on 23 November in Timişoara. The MEP took part at the event at the invitation of DAHR’s Timiş county office.
In his speech, the MEP touched upon the importance of Romania’s regionalisation, the significance of the decentralisation of central institutions, as well as the relevance of the reorganisation along the lines of the historical regions:
„In Romania the historical regions such as Banat, Oltenia and Transylvania still exist. These are filled with strong cultural content and could represent the basis of the administrative reorganisation. Therefore there is no need to artificially construct regions, we would only need to acknowledge that these are the regions that form the natural tissue of the Romanian society, these are the regional subdivisions that live in people’s minds, not the current system of development regions. These regions should be divided into smaller units in order to create efficient regional planning” emphasized Sógor. In the opinion of the MEP we would need to have more and more regional level decisions so that in the future we could avoid problems such as the one, which arose during the latest reorganisation in the field of healthcare when in several localities regional interests were not taken into consideration, which became the source of tensions. “The authorities elected by the local communities know best the regions’ interests; they are the ones who can best appreciate how to distribute resources. At the same time, some regions could give a boost to the entire country either through economic planning or social policy decisions”, opined the MEP.
„The crisis in Europe is primarily a moral and not economic one, while in Romania there is a strong deficit of the European Union’s values: from the European principles of solidarity, subsidiarity and responsibility we took over even less than we could absorb EU funds. We have to change our mentalities”, concluded his speech Sógor.
Csaba Borboly, the president of the Harghita County Council and István Csutak, regional policy expert also held presentations.
