The Regional Coordination and Development Committees (CCDR) «are a good starting point for regionalization», defended António Covas, professor at the University of Algarve and specialist in “governance” issues. in an interview with the Impressões program, jointly promoted by the Sul Informação and by Rádio Universitária do Algarve RUA FM.
António Covas added that the CCDR “can be substantially improved with new skills”. All the more because, "20 or 30 years ago", these organizations "were already a school of regionalization".
"At this moment, if they gained new competences", the CCDRs "could start this movement of regionalization", he said.
António Covas, launched this Saturday, in Faro, his most recent book, entitled “Territories and Territorial Development: Chronicles of the Southwest Peninsular”, said that “what is being discussed, the Decentralization Package, should not only be for the municipalities, but above all for the CCDRs”.
“In the header, it says: Coordination and Development Commission and this Coordination and Development were never fully fulfilled”, he underlined.
To govern these “super CCDRs”, António Covas defends the conversion of these entities into Regional Executive Councils, “in which the president of the CCDR would be a kind of regional president and the regional directors would be a kind of regional ministers”.
“In the form of a Regional Executive Council, the CCDR would already have conditions, in fact, to carry out Coordination and Development”, he recommended.
And how would this President of the Regional Executive Council be chosen? Professor Covas speaks of two hypotheses, the soft and the hard.
"The soft hypothesis is for the Municipal Councils to indicate three names and the Government to name one of these names", while the "hard hypothesis" is "to elect the president in a regional electoral council, in an electoral college, formed by local elected representatives".
"And there is still a third hypothesis, which is to elect the president by direct and universal suffrage," explained the UAlg professor.
«The first is perfectly possible, you just can't do it if you don't want to. The second and third are more democratic», he admitted.
And would it be possible to start with the "soft hypothesis" and progress to the following ones? «Eventually, it would be necessary to do the experiment and see if you have legs to walk. It is necessary to test the reactions», he defended.
What is certain is that, in António Covas' opinion, «as it is, for now, it doesn't work. The pair inter pairs it has no capacity for executive coordination in the region, it has been more than proven!”.
Covas also admitted that the work of the CCDRs "depends a lot on the protagonists": "sometimes a bad structure, with a good protagonist, works well, and a good structure with a bad protagonist does not work."
But, insisted António Covas, "the first solution is perfectly possible" and only depends on the political will, namely the Government.
The themes of regionalization, territorial planning, the new rurality, the cycles of the territory, are some of those addressed in the set of 30 chronicles, now compiled in a book. All these reflection texts have been published, since 2016, in the Sul Informação.
The book “Territories and Territorial Development: Crónicas do Sudoeste Peninsular” will be presented tomorrow, Saturday, at 21 pm, at Club Farense, in Rua de Santo António, in Faro. The book will be presented by the Secretary of State for Forests Miguel Freitas, from the Algarve and who was also a professor at the University of Algarve.
Impressões com António Covas was originally aired on Wednesday and will repeat tomorrow, Saturday, at 12:00, on RUA FM (102.7 FM). The interview is also available online now..
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