The Leader of the Shetland Islands Council Gary Robinson, who represents Scotland at the European Committee of the Regions, COTER commission, tabled a range of proposals that aimed at ensuring that EU policies better reflect the problems of the Islands, remote areas, and more widely, local communities. Currently this is done by “EU statistical regions”  also known as “NUTS”.  In most countries, including Scotland and the rest of the UK, these do not reflect local communities or even regions, not even clearly recognised areas such as Shetland Island Councils. Instead they are designed by national and EU statisticians by grouping together council areas to meet a given population threshold.

 

This has implications for successful application of EU law and indeed EU funds into local communities that need it. Cllr Robinson said:

 

“Often poorer, inaccessible, demographically or environmentally challenged communities are not recognised properly in EU statistics because a statistician decided to randomly add it into a larger region just to fit the demographic requirement of the current so-called, and aptly named, “NUTS” areas. This is unfair and has negative consequences over EU policymaking that goes well beyond mere funding. The bottom-line is that two communities having identical challenges anywhere in Europe should be recognised in EU statistics”.

 

In his view this has implications that go well beyond EU funds , as the same artificial statistical areas are used for other EU legislation be that environmental , public services or transport.  Cllr Robinson added:

 

“I believe comparable statistical data on local and sub-local areas must be developed as a matter of urgency, we need the OECD, Eurostat and the European Commission to translate the urban-rural dimension to new EuroStat areas, drawing from reliable information from the ground to ensure that EU policies make real sense for our communities”

 

In that respect Scotland has real and tested models to target EU and national funds using new indicators . He added:

“In Scotland we already use a number of quite sophisticated territorial (indeed, sub-regional) indicators for domestic and EU policy decision making; on Multiple Deprivation, Rurality and Socio Economic Performance against Europe2020 targets. Surprisingly no EU official survey has event been made on these national experiences that could be used to develop EU-wide comparable local indicators. “

 

The vast majority of Cllr Robinson's proposals were approved by members by a large majority. Welcoming the result, Cllr Robinson concluded:

 

“Colleagues, I believe that this could be a missed opportunity. We are not talking about some theoretical models being developed by academics, the OECD or DG REGIO. There are  a number of tried and tested models of "beyond GDP indicators" across Europe that are already used to shape policy decisions. Let’s build from the bottom up.”

 

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