​President of the Autonomous Region of Valle D'Aosta and EA coordinator for the COTER commission, Mr Augusto Rollandin, addressed the Commissioner for Regional Policy Corina Cretu during the 116th Plenary session of the European Committee of the Regions on the topic of the Cohesion Policy.
 
Mr Rollandin appreciated that a direct dialogue between the regions and the European Commission is essential and it is of foremost importance that the regions are called upon to provide input into the policy making process. He called for the Cohesion Policy to reflect mountain areas' needs and for stronger urban-rural linkages. The importance of developing new indicators besides GDP that would take account of the realities on the ground and represent the complexity of the regional economic dynamics was recalled.