Text tabled : A7-0202/2010

  Bruno Gollnisch (NI), in writing. – (FR) Encouraging the cooperation of the Baltic states in order to protect the area and to respond to common challenges relating to economic, social, energy and transport matters, and so on; and, indeed, why not? It seems to me, however, that this cooperation could very easily take place without the interference of the European Commission.

In truth, however, the essential part of this report is the promotion of macro-regions as an additional ‘level of governance’, and perhaps, though only in the future, as part of the European Union’s ‘cohesion’ policy. This cohesion would involve amalgamating regions on both sides of borders, if possible in the form of European groups of local and regional authorities, and these groups would necessarily have legal personality and choose, in a ‘sovereign’ manner, the national law that will govern them. If, in order to do that, we have to look for or invent common interests as a criterion for amalgamating regions, and to create a European tax to finance it all, never mind.

Whatever the rapporteur says about it, anything goes when it comes to abolishing national frontiers and reconstructing the European landscape. This is why, quite apart from the interest that the Baltic Sea and its problems may arouse, we voted against this report.