Brussels, 24/11/2010 (Agence Europe) - Addressing press at the end of the day's work, Rudy Demotte, the minister- president of Wallonia (Belgium) stated that “ we intend to defend the elements discussed at the informal Council on 22 and 23 November in Liège at the General Affairs Council (GAC). This means taking ownership of the debate at the GAC, which is an important step in how regional affairs are tackled”. He also underlined that member states were calling for a re-think on conditions, which have become a political challenge (how can they be related to structural policies?) and the recognition of these structural policies in themselves (regional economic deployment) which have been related to major European strategies (the Lisbon strategy).
Cohesion policy should be understood as an investment policy. Its primary objective is to reduce disparities between the regions. The commissioner for regional policy, Johannes Hahn, explained that they had an increasing need to focus more on the results of their policy, which meant that they needed to continue improving its quality by linking it to the 2020 strategy. How can this be done? What instruments are available? The commissioner announced that a number of proposals had been made and that they had reached an agreement to continue their reflection within the taskforce, which would lead to concrete results that would themselves be tackled under the Hungarian Presidency of the EU. He said that one interesting proposal consisted of creating transition regions, which would be discussed during talks on the cohesion policy budget.
The Hungarian minister for national development, in charge of cohesion policy, transport, energy and telecoms, Thomas Fellagi, explained how Hungary saw cohesion policy as a major priority and “probably the only integrated development approach”. Hungary is in favour of the commissioner's approach, which consists of increasing cohesion policy visibility. Under the Hungarian Presidency, a new tradition will be established, namely, explained the minister, cohesion policy questions can be discussed at a GAC level.
In reply to a journalist, who asked a question regarding the need for most member states to maintain the principle of a soft exit from the convergence objective, Johannes Hahn explained: “What we are proposing is not just the renaming of the regions that gradually lose their aid. It will involve taking all the regions in an intermediate situation (between75% and 90% of average GDP), considering them as transition regions and seeing how they receive less funding than the convergence regions but more funding than the competitiveness regions. This is about organising the transition between the two levels”. (G.B./transl.fl)