An intense and fruitful discussion on regional development and territorial cohesion took place in the Spanish Senate’s iconic Clara Campoamor room.

The FIIAPP organised a forum for dialogue through the EUROsociAL programme on EU-CELAC cooperation on regional development in Madrid, where relevant actors from the bi-regional panorama were brought together with the aim of analysing the state of the issue of territorial cohesion in the political agendas of both Europe and Latin America.

In this dialogue, the chief advisor of the Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy of the European Commission, Ronald Hall, pointed out the importance of the territory as an area for innovation, competitiveness and sustainable development. For his part, the senator Asuncion Sánchez Zaplana emphasised the promotion of the exchange of European and Latin American experiences to minimise regional inequalities.

The Chief of Staff of the Secretary General of the European Committee of the Regions, Gianluca Spinaci, raised the importance of recovering territories and identities, while Juanma Santomé, director of EUROsociAL, stressed the objective of seeking complementarity with institutions to contribute to regional development in Latin America.

What is EUROsociAL+?

EUROsociAL+, funded by the European Union, is a cooperation programme between Latin America and the EU which seeks to contribute to improving social cohesion in Latin American countries – as well as to institutional strengthening – through support for their processes for the design, reform and implementation of public policies. It focusses its action on the areas of gender, governance and social policy.

In 2016, it began its third phase of the project which was awarded by the Directorate General for International Cooperation and Development (DG DEVCO/EuropeAid) to a consortium led by the FIIAPP, with Expertise France, IILA and SISCA as coordinator partners.