The Government of the Azores has been developing a joint work with other European outermost regions in the way of the demonstration of common positions in what it concerns to the preparation of the communitarian period after 2013, affirmed the regional director for European Affairs and External Cooperation, in the opening session of the XIV Conference of presidents RUP happening in Guyana, in which he represents the president of the Azorean Executive.

Rodrigo Oliveira underlined, in specific, the Azorean contribute for the public consultations on the future of the policy of cohesion and on the reform of the budget of the European Union.

The work already begun by the outermost regions “will certainly continue, established in the cross presupposition, of the vital importance of the maintenance, deepening and appropriate financing of the policy of cohesion”, he guaranteed.

For the regional director for European Affairs and External Cooperation, the revision of the cohesion and budgetary policies constitutes “a fundamental instrument in the promotion of the development of the regions of the EU and a guarantee of the solidarity among the whole Community space”.

In this frame, he alerted for the fact of the Green Book on Territorial Cohesion not giving the expected and demanded distinction to the specificity of the territorial reality of the RUP, “as it still dilutes and confuses its concept”.

Rodrigo Oliveira still enhanced the announcement of the Commission “of a new appropriately entitled Communication - ‘The Outermost Regions: a trump for Europe’, document considered globally positive, in spite of being clear that it is “necessary, now, to advance with a policy that is really accomplishing of this new paradigm”.

This change “constitutes an added challenge for the RUP, because we will have to reinforce the initiatives with aim at the recognition of a cross and constant treatment on conditionalisms that we suffer, along with the fair claim of the use of our potentialities”, he thought, while adding that “we all know that words aren’t worthy if they aren’t accompanied by the actions that make them real”.

As for the position of the Azores as being part of Europe, Rodrigo Oliveira showed the wish of “deepening the cooperation with the remaining RUP in several areas, such as, for example, the biodiversity, the renewable energies or the protection and management of the resources, habitats and sea sorts, but also in matters like the natural risks and the civil protection or, even, in the approximation of the populations of our regions, promoting the professional and youthful mobility”.