AIC Forum commitment in the consultations to elaborate the Strategy and the Action Plan of the future Adriatic and Ionian Macroregion

The collaboration with the Permanent Secretariat of the Adriatic-Ionian Initiative in recent years, as well as the commitment shown in terms of visibility and communication towards the various institutions of the European Union, have led the AIC Forum to become one of the major reference stakeholders for the consultation process concerning the EUSAIR strategy. The consultation, which has got to the heart of the strategy right in the course of 2013, has to be considered as a way to position and define shared and strategic projects for the entire area concerned, with the full involvement all participating players at all political-administrative, public, private and civil society levels (i.e. State, regions, local governments, Chambers of Commerce, professional associations, universities, social partners, enterprises, civil society, non-governmental organizations, etc.).
During this year the AIC Forum has been repeatedly called upon to give its contribution and officially express and clear and operational stance within this far-reaching process of consultation through a number of different tools and in different contexts, e.g. the following:
a) events, workshops and round-tables, organized at various institutional levels:
– “Towards the Adriatic-Ionian Macroregion” (Bari, 25th-26th September);
– “Linking the Adriatic-Ionian Macroregion” (Ancona, 14th October) – “The Action Plan for the Strategy of the Adriatic and Ionian Region” (Ancona, 8th November);
– “A Strategy for the Adriatic and Ionian Macroregion” (Ancona, 12th November);
– Regional consultation workgroups on the Macroregional Strategy (Ancona, 7th and 8th November 2013), representing the system of Chambers of Commerce;

b) interviews, questionnaires, statistical surveys proposed by players entrusted by the DG Maritime Affairs and Fisheries of the European Commission (e.g. Cogea, Cespi, GOPA-Cartermill S.A., T33, etc.)..

The consultation has occurred at three different levels:
a) a bottom-up regional consultation, which saw the involvement of the regions coordinating the four pillars of the EUSAIR Strategy (i.e. Friuli Venezia-Giulia, Veneto, Emilia Romagna and Apulia), besides the Marche Region acting at national coordinator and reference authority for the cross-sector pillar on research, innovation and development of SMEs;
b) a national/ministerial consultation, e.g. the one promoted in Italy through the national Contact Points between the reference subjects of the 2014-2020 partnership agreement, in view of the need, also foreseen by the new 2014-2020 regulations, to take macroregional strategies into account both within the partnership agreement and the operational programmes;
c) a European Commission level, foreseeing several ways of consultation of the most strategic stakeholders, e.g. “Towards the Action Plan for the Strategy of the Adriatic and Ionian Macroregion” (Brussels, 14th November), organised by the DG for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries or the consultation published online by the DG for Regional and Urban Policy of the European Commission by filling in a questionnaire from the following website:. http://ec.europa.eu/eusurvey/runner/pbl_cons_eusair; or the consultation specific for pillar 1 that can be accessed from the following website: http://forms.interact-eu.net/eusair-online-consultation-pillar-1, within the INTERACT programme..

The consultation required the strong coordination of the Associations’ Chambers of Commerce, so that each Chamber of Commerce could not only express the needs of its area of reference, but was also aware of how certain needs and critical elements of each area’s economic system can be shared and contextualized from a macroregional point of view.
Thus worth mentioning is also the work done with the Italian Union of Chambers of Commerce, together with all Italian member Chambers of Commerce meeting in Ancona on 8th November last, to draw up a single reference document for the entire system of Chambers of Commerce, which should be submitted to the regions and the Italian Ministry for Foreign Affairs..

The document, completed the 13th of December 2013 (due date for the consultation EUSAIR), represents a summary of stances undertaken by the Italian Chambers system together with those emerged at the last meetings of the Forum AIC thematic Workgroups and taken into account also by non-Italian Chambers of Commerce member to the AIC Forum, which, each in the different contexts in which they are asked to contribute, can express positions in line with said stances..

Questionario EUSAIR