Overcoming obstacles to investment (workshop code: INV12A94), Brussel - Hoofdinhoud

A fresh survey of local and regional authorities, a new study by Metis GmbH and a detailed analysis of the main documents of the 2016 European Semester carried out by the CoR - presented in this occasion - show that the local and regional authorities have a role to play in overcoming obstacles to investment.

To be able to boost long-term investments most conducive to innovation, productivity and growth, the local and regional authorities need fresh financial resources, to be seen as partners by their national governments and to improve their administrative capacity.

The President of the CoR, in his quality of rapporteur of a CoR Opinion on this topic, will discuss with representatives of the OECD, think-tanks and academia.

Agenda

Moderator: Ton van Lierop

14:30 - 14:50

Overcoming territorial obstacles to investment: key facts

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  CoR survey of EU regions and cities on obstacles to investment at regional and local level
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  Obstacles to investment in the 2016 European Semester
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  Identifying relevant obstacles to investment at regional and local level

Presentations by Bert Kuby (CoR, Head of Unit ECON Secretariat) and by Haris Martinos (METIS GmbH)

14:50 - 15:30

Statements from Michael Thöne (FiFo-Köln), Haris Martinos and Gregory Claeys (Bruegel) and exchange with the audience

15:30 - 16:00

Bridging the investment gap: the role of the local and regional authorities

Remarks by Markku Markkula (CoR President)

Investing in Europe's regions and cities: multilevel governance and the quality of public administration

Statements by Claire Charbit (Deputy Head of the OECD Regional Development Policy Division)

16:00 - 16:50

Statements from panellists and general discussion with the audience

16:50 - 17:00

Wrapping-up

Speakers

Grégory Claeys

Grégory Claeys, a French and Spanish citizen, joined Bruegel as a research fellow in February 2014. Grégory’s research interests include international macroeconomics and finance, central banking and European governance. From 2006 to 2009 Grégory worked as a macroeconomist in the Economic Research Department of the French bank Crédit Agricole. Prior to joining Bruegel he also conducted research in several capacities, including as a visiting researcher in the Financial Research Department of the Central Bank of Chile in Santiago, and in the Economic Department of the French Embassy in Chicago.

Grégory is also an Associate Professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers in Paris where he is teaching macroeconomics in the Master of Finance. He previously taught undergraduate macroeconomics at Sciences Po in Paris. He holds a PhD in Economics from the European University Institute (Florence), an MSc in economics from Paris X University and an MSc in management from HEC (Paris). Grégory is fluent in English, French and Spanish.

Claire Charbit

Claire Charbit coordinates the OECD Dialogue with Sub national governments within the Public Governance and Territorial Development Directorate. She has developed the OECD’s work program on multi-level governance, and its impact on regional development policies in the Regional Development Policy Division. She has contributed to several horizontal reports on related topics and worked on national territorial reviews like the ones on Finland, Brazil, Chile, France, Morocco, etc. as well as regional and metropolitan ones. She also pioneered the OECD’s work on contracts across levels of government, the use of performance indicators in regional politics, and has developed what has become a standard methodology for analysing multi-level governance - thereby informing studies on water governance, fiscal decentralisation, public investment and now migration policies. She has, on a regular basis, participated in expert meetings on both national and international level and organised the OECD Ministerial Meeting on “Regions and cities: where policies and people meet”, in Marseille, France, December 2013. Claire Charbit holds a PhD in Economics, specializing in institutional economics. Before joining the OECD in 2004, she was an associate professor of innovation, networks and institutional economics at Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications in Paris.

Markku Markkula

Markku Markkula is the President of the European Committee of the Regions and currently rapporteur on the opinion on 'Bridging the Investment Gap: How to tackle the challenges?'. A long-standing politician, Mr. Markkula has been member of the Espoo City Council since 1980 and is a former member of the Finnish Parliament. Mr. Markkula works at the Aalto University as advisor to Aalto Presidents, where his focus mainly lays on European Union research, innovation and education policy affairs.

Haris Martinos

Haris Martinos is an independent local and regional development expert based in the UK, Belgium and Greece. He holds degrees in architecture and regional planning from the National Technical University Athens and Oxford Brookes University, and has carried out doctoral studies at the London School of Economics. Initially a senior officer in UK local government, he founded the consultancy LRDP (Local and Regional Development Planning) and was its managing director from 1986 to 2010.

In his international consulting career, spanning 30 years, he held senior positions in projects of the OECD, the European Commission and other European and international organisations and many national and regional authorities, covering practically all European and many other countries. For the European Committee of the Regions, he recently carried out a study on "A Code of Conduct on the involvement of the LRAs in the European Semester".

He currently collaborates with Metis GmbH, Deloitte (Belgium) and GIZ, and is a member of the Advisory Committee of the Association of European Border Regions (AEBR), an Adviser to the Conference of Peripheral Maritime Regions (CPMR) and the Secretary-General of the European Local Development Network (LDnet).

Michael Thöne

Dr. Michael Thöne studied Economics and Political Sciences at the University of Cologne and at the Trinity College, University of Dublin. Since 2005, he is the Managing Director of the FiFo Institute of Public Economics at the University of Cologne. His research in public finance covers revenue-side and expenditure-side topics alike; currently with a strong focus on fiscal federalism, governance reforms and regional development. Michael Thöne has been working as a scientific policy consultant for more than 20 years, inter alia with ten federal ministries in Germany, state governments and parliaments, and local government. Outside Germany, he worked with several European governments, EU institutions, the OECD and the WTO.

Moderator: Ton van Lierop

Ton van Lierop is currently news manager/coordinator economy of the Flemish public broadcaster VRT in Brussels. He’s of Dutch nationality and has worked for various Dutch media, including nearly eleven years as senior correspondent and Brussels bureau chief of the national news agency ANP. From 2006 until 2012 Ton was spokesman for the European Commission, working for Vice-President Günter Verheugen and Regional Policy Commissioner Johannes Hahn. He joined VRT in 2012 as general reporter and editor of the late news of VRT. Since 2013 Ton is a member of the board of JournalismFund.eu.