On 26 September, Executive member of the Corsican regional authority Ms Marie Antoinette Maupertuis met with European Commissioner for Regional Policy Corina Creţu, Member of the European Parliament and Vice Chairman of the EP Searica Intergroup Tonino Picula and the Economic and Social Committee member S. Mallia to discuss the challenges of islands and cohesion policy.

During the meeting the members of the CoR, European Parliament and EESC highlighted the cohesion policy's fundamental role in addressing the needs of all regions, in particular those suffering from geographic and demographic constraints, and called on the European Commission to place special attention to island territories.

Ms Maupertuis, who is also CoR rapporteur on entrepreneurship on islands, stated that we need to develop a new methodology that would allow islanders to fully benefit from the single market and that the support through cohesion policy is now needed more than ever to cope with the higher costs faced by island businesses and citizens.