The Lisbon Monitoring Platform of the Committee of the Regions (CoR) has launched an online survey on "The European Economic Recovery Plan in Regions and Cities: One Year On", with the aim of assessing the impact of the economic and financial crisis at local/regional level.

It's been a year since the EU launched its Economic Recovery Plan, which established a timely, targeted and temporary fiscal stimulus of around €200 billion euros. With this plan, the European Union raised a series of measures that covered actions for investing in buildings, green cars and factories sustainability and for supporting SMEs and banking sector.

The final aim of all those measures was to protect European citizens from the worst consequences of financial crisis. Now, the Committee of the Regions wants to evaluate if those investments have really achived its objective, and if cities and regions have benefitted from their effects, as well as to assess the impact of the economic and financial crisis at local/regional level.

That is why the CoR has invited EU local and regional authorities to participate in an online survey called "The European Economic Recovery Plan in Regions and Cities: One Year On", that can be accessed in the website of the Lisbon Monitoring Platform of the CoR until November 30.

The survey will also provide a first evaluation by local and regional authorities of actions taken on the ground under the European Economic Recovery Plan, and it aims at stimulating a debate about the past, ongoing and future anti-crisis measures and the involvement of local and regional authorities.

The results will be presented in a report early next year at the 2010 Territorial Dialogue event, where they will be discussed with top representatives of the European Commission, the EU Presidency, the European Parliament and the European Economic and Social Committee.