Europa delle regioni

[Krn]

EUROPEE - LOMBARDO: CI BATTEREMO PER COSTRUIRE UN'EUROPA DELLE REGIONI E DEI POPOLI

05 giu. - ''Uniti sotto la stessa bandiera, quella dell'autonomia, ci batteremo per costruire un'Europa delle Regioni e dei popoli, non piu' dominata dagli interessi delle lobbies e delle burocrazie. Un'Europa che, riscoprendo l'anima cristiana dei suoi padri fondatori, sapra' guardare al Mediterraneo e ai suoi conflitti e impegnarsi affinche' i popoli della sponda sud trovino nei loro Paesi dignitose condizioni di vita e di lavoro".

Lo dice Raffaele Lombardo, presidente della Regione Sicilia e leader dell'Mpa, in lizza nella competizione di domani e dopodomani con La Destra di Francesco Storace, il Partito dei pensionati di Carlo Fatuzzo e l'Alleanza di centro di Francesco Pionati.

"Un'Europa -aggiunge- in cui i cittadini contino finalmente di piu' delle tecnocrazie di Bruxelles e che sia disposta a ridiscutere il Trattato di Lisbona. Abbiamo scelto di restare uniti sotto la stessa bandiera, quella dell'autonomia, per non rinunciare alla nostra identita' e alla nostra liberta'.
Lavoreremo insieme per riequilibrare il rapporto tra Nord e Sud, tra economie avanzate e aree deboli dell'Europa e dell'Italia, nel nome della coesione e della vera unita' del Paese''.
''In Europa -conclude Lombardo- rappresenteremo quei milioni di cittadini che si sentono traditi da una politica sempre piu' centralista che ormai non li rappresenta piu'''. (Adnkronos).

Il link: EUROPEE - LOMBARDO: CI BATTEREMO PER COSTRUIRE UN'EUROPA DELLE REGIONI E DEI POPOLI - Clandestinoweb: sondaggi politici, elettorali. Il sondaggio politico elettorale che fa opinione

[Krn]

L'Europa delle regioni:



Cliccare ed aprire per ingrandire - cartina dal sito dell'Assemblea delle Regioni Europee.

Noterete che comprende anche la Turchia e tutto il Caucaso.

Assembly of European Regions - European organisation

[Krn]

2 The diversity of regions and regionalisms
2.2 Diversity between states

To attempt more precise definitions would run the risk of arbitrarily excluding many of the phenomena we need to address. In fact the intentionally loose, multifaceted nature of these definitions reflects the reality of regional diversity, which has many dimensions. The differences start with the states which in practical political terms largely define regions, for they are themselves very different in area and population size, in economic strength, in cultural homogeneity or heterogeneity, and in political structure. A diversity of state forms – unitary (for example, France, Portugal, Republic of Ireland), federal (Germany, Austria, Belgium), and ‘quasi-federal’ or with non-uniform limited regional autonomy (Spain, Italy, the UK) – produces a diversity of regions. In a fully federal state (for example, Germany), governmental activities are divided between the centre and the regional units (for example, Lander) so that each level has the right to make final decisions in some fields of activity. There is a wide spectrum between this and the extremes of authoritarian centralism (for example, in Spain under Franco's dictatorship). Likewise, there are many gradations on the identity spectrum, from full national separatism based on a distinct culture and language to, at the other extreme, the absence of any popular identification with a purely administrative division that lacks any historical basis or cultural significance.

Thus Europe's regions display huge variations not only in their economic development, but also in their degrees of political organisation and autonomy (if any), their status with respect to central state institutions, their historical basis or lack of it, their cultural distinctiveness, and so forth. Germany's federal region of North Rhine Westphalia with some 15 million people is over three times bigger than a member state such as the Irish Republic, while the latter's centralism has generally precluded effective regionalism (see Section 2.3 below). Some regions are administrative concoctions with little or no popular identity, and while some of the strongest are ‘national’ regions comprising historic nations (for example, Scotland and Catalonia which once had separate statehood), other strong regions, such as Baden-Wurttemberg and Lombardy, are not based on a national history or any very marked cultural distinctiveness.

There may, though, be some convergence between the ‘national’ regions and the stronger ‘non-national’ ones: the former may experience a ‘regionalising’ of sub-state nationalisms (settling for autonomy rather than full independence within the EU framework), while the latter may undergo a ‘(quasi) nationalising’ with further development of their autonomist identities and growing distinctiveness. Baden-Wurttemberg and Lombardy with Rhône-Alpes, Wales and Catalonia (see Figure 2) together formed the ‘Four Motors’ cross-border alliance of regions, all city-focused and examples of what Harvie (1994) calls economically successful ‘bourgeois regionalism’. (Wales was not one of the original four members, but has now joined these.) We shall come back to the ‘Four Motors’ as an example of regional networking in Section 3.2. In contrast, other regionalisms mobilise support around the problems of economic or cultural decline. Furthermore, many regions, whatever their problems, also have the problem of lacking a basis for regional mobilisation – they may have little or no cultural identity, or a weak and fractured geographical structure, or they may be riven politically by local rivalries and internal divisions between competing local authorities.

Distinctions must be drawn between, on the one hand, the bottom-up development or resurgence of sub-state nationalist and populist movements, often based on the identity politics of long-established regional cultures and languages which often pre-date the state, and, on the other hand, the top-down imposition of administrative or economic regionalisation, or the designation of ‘problem regions’ and ‘regional problems’ by central state bureaucracies. However, as in the Napoleonic system of regions administered by centrally-appointed ‘prefects’, top-down regionalism can be long established, and in some cases imposed regions can later become the basis for popular ‘bottom-up’ regionalism.....

Sito fantastico - il link: http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/reso...93120&direct=1

[buran]

paradossalmente la polverizzazione dell'europa in microentità statuali potrebbe esserne la salvezza...

[Krn]

6.1 The complexities of a multifaceted Europe

If the ‘Europe of the Regions’ model is also ruled out – at least in its stronger versions which suggest that nation states are being replaced – the interesting question remains: how will significantly enhanced regionalisms relate to other ‘possible Europes’? These include the traditional ‘nation state’ and ‘Federal Europe’ models, both of which also reflect some continuing elements of reality, but in addition a ‘Europe’ of cities, of cultures, of national and ethnic minorities, and of transnational movements and structures which extend well beyond the institutional architecture of the EU. This multifaceted Europe is not captured by any of the three ‘models’, most obviously because they are too simplified. But, more fundamentally, they fail because they each focus on one of three ‘traditional levels’ of territorial government as if the future involved simply making a choice between these levels. They counterpose them as discrete ‘alternatives’ rather than focusing on how they interrelate, and how particular social processes span or include the different levels. They fail to appreciate the qualitative transformation in their interrelationships that is already well underway.

Political power and government are seen very simplistically in terms of a ‘zero-sum’ competition between discrete territorial levels, with more power at one level automatically meaning less at another. But political restructuring cannot be reduced to this simple arithmetic – there is no ‘fixed total’ of power to be distributed, and power is not only distributed between political institutions at different spatial scales, it is also located in the relations between these institutions and it is found outside them in civil society. As Susan Strange pointed out, nation states may be losing some of their autonomy not because power has ‘gone upwards’ to other political institutions such as the EU but because it has ‘gone sideways’ to economic institutions and global market forces, and in some respects it has ‘gone nowhere’ or just ‘evaporated’ as political control over economic forces is simply lost (Strange, 1994). Likewise, more power for regions does not necessarily mean less for states. We have seen that states may indeed be strengthened by devolving some political processes to their regions and by ‘pooling’ some of their sovereignty in the EU collective. Furthermore, while states may lose some autonomous power in one policy area (for example, industrial development), they may gain new powers in other areas (for example, labour training, and controls over labour migration), and such distinctions are increasingly important given the fact that globalisation is having very uneven impacts on different state functions. So the idea of the EU or the regions as alternatives to the nation state would seem to be fundamentally flawed.

The traditionalist limitations of this idea are well depicted by the metaphor of ‘Gulliver's fallacy’, in which new political forms can only be scale replicas of the existing nation state, either larger as in a ‘United States of Europe’, or smaller as in regional government (just as the two societies which Gulliver met in his Travels, one of giants, the other of midgets, were simply scale replicas of human society). This perspective sees only a change of geographical scale with no real appreciation that political processes and institutions at different scales are likely to be qualitatively (not just quantitatively) different, and no recognition that their new interrelationships may be a key factor potentially transforming the whole nature of politics. Much of the debate about Europe's future is vitiated by false polarisations between regions, states and other territorial levels.

Instead, it seems more fruitful to think of qualitative changes in the relationships within and between such levels, and to see them as being increasingly linked in ‘multi-layered’ or ‘multi-level’ structures of governance, with multiple identities and loyalties, albeit ones of varying intensity or importance (Guibernau, 1999). We also need to take into account the fact that regionalism, along with other territorial forms of politics, culture and identity, is increasingly in interaction with non-territorial transnational movements which cross-cut these levels.

Il link: http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/reso....php?id=193158

[Krn]

paradossalmente la polverizzazione dell'europa in microentità statuali potrebbe esserne la salvezza...

L'unica possibile, il resto non sono che artificiosi esperimenti destinati a fallire in maniera piu' o meno conflittuale.

Eppoi basta con questa UE che detta l'80% delle leggi nazionali, basta con la libera circolazione di persone (capitali ancora ancora), basta con una politica agricola assurda che fa' pagare tutti i cittadini per arricchire una limitata elite' di moderni latifondisti francesi, spagnoli, italiani, inglesi, tedeschi... agli operai invece calci in culo, basta con una commissione fine a se' stessa che non fa' altro che difendere i propri privilegi di casta e ci costa miliardi, insomma, io ne ho le palle piene.

O si comincia a cambiare o la UE non durera' a lungo, le do max. altri 10 anni.

[Krn]

Towards a `Europe of the Regions'?
Visions and Reality from a Critical Perspective

Susana Borrás-Alomar
Thomas Christiansen
Andrés Rodríguez-Pose

The term `Europe of the Regions' has almost become a commonplace in recent years.... The regional dimension is thus intended to reflect better the cultural and national divisions within Europe and, therefore, to tackle more adequately the problems left unsolved by the 'obsolete' national structure. In this context, the nation-state would play only a secondary linking role between those two centres. And, since the ultimate function of this role is
superfluous, the concept of the nation-state as it is conceived now is due to perish in Europe in the long run....

Articolo completo - il link: http://personal.lse.ac.uk/RODRIGU1/r...icy%201994.pdf

[Lucio Vero]

C'era già un thread riguardante l'Europa Nazione. Potevi postarlo pure lì.

[Lucio Vero]

Paradossalmente la polverizzazione dell'Europa in micro-entità statuali potrebbe esserne la salvezza...

Paradossale sì. In realtà è un discorso molto più difficile, organico.

Già me li vedo i Padani che in nome della purezza ariana del Nord cacciano i terun dalle loro terre. Per non parlare dei croati e serbi che si scannano, dei tedeschi dell'Est contro quelli dell'Ovest, degli spagnoli e francesi del Sud contro quelli del Nord, i valloni contro i fiamminghi. Già me li vedo gli staterelli europei che cercano in tutti i modi di espellere i migranti dal proprio suolo verso la regione vicina.

[Krn]

C'era già un thread riguardante l'Europa Nazione. Potevi postarlo pure lì.

E' vero, hai ragione, ma questo vuole essere un 3d specifico, che analizza esclusivamente la prospettiva di un'Europa diversa, fondata in primis sulle autonomie regionali (fiscali, amministrative, economiche, sociali...), non vuole essere un discorso che va' ad innestarsi su un argomento cosi' generico quale quello di un'Europa Nazione perche' poi si scade in discussioni troppo larghe (cominciando a tirare fuori il ruolo geostrategico della Russia - e via con Putin, Medvedev, Alessandro II.... il ruolo atlantista della G. Bretagna con annessa e connessa opposizione agli USA... il ruolo pro o contro della Turchia con 1000 discussioni al riguardo... ecc..).

Qui vorrei che scrivano quelli che credono se un progetto europeo fondato sulle regioni puo' o meno avere successo, motivandolo con argomentazioni che non scadano di tono e senza ideologie fantapolitiche, ma usando soprattutto lucidita' e raziocinio.