How can the CAP be made "territorially smart?" The European Regions have several ideas on this issue and wish to debate them with the Community's institutions.

The Regions of Europe cannot stand idly by as the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) changes. At the instigation of the Conference of Peripheral Maritime Regions (CPMR), an organisation with 160 members, they are opening the debate on how to define a post-2013 agricultural and food policy that will be more focused on the regions. Indeed, they proposed to improve the contribution of CAP to territorial equilibrium, to take up the European challenge of food and also to develop higher quality and local farming, and to reform the first pillar of the CAP to guide it towards these objectives. Some Regions are already pursuing support measures to this effect, by developing the two pillars.

Michel Barnier, Mariann Fischer-Boel and Luc Van den Brande, President of the Committee of the Regions, took part in this seminar. Claudio Martini, President of the CPMR and the Tuscany Region, presented the proposals of his organisation, exposed in the response from the Regions to the legislative proposals of the Commission of 20 May 2008.