Brussels, 10/05/2011 (Agence Europe) - The coordinators of the Danube strategy met on Gödöllõ on Monday 9 and Tuesday 10 May at the invitation of the Hungarian Presidency of the EU Council of Ministers with the aim of ensuring that everything was tied up so that the European summit would only have to rubber stamp the approval given to the strategy by the General Affairs Council in Luxembourg on 13 April (see EUROPE 10358). This would allow the incoming Polish Presidency, which will take over from Hungary on 1 July, to get down to work immediately on implementation. Benefits of the strategy will only begin to be felt by citizens in about 10 years' time.
Funding of the strategy. Pal Völner, Hungarian Minister of State for Infrastructure at the Ministry of National Development, believes that funding for the strategy is available. “The amount undrawn from the structural funds in the period between 2007 and 2013” is, according to Völner, somewhere between €10 billion and €30 billion, depending on whether the pessimistic or the optimistic view is taken. All attending the meeting agreed that this amount itself means great opportunities for the region, and Völner pointed out that there are EU funds available, apart from the structural funds too, such as the TEN-T funds in the field of transport, which provide further investment opportunities. Regional Policy Commissioner Johannes Hahn said that coordinators must start working straight away, in order to obtain funds from the next multi-annual financial framework. With the content debate of the next seven-year framework budget starting this autumn, it will, therefore, be very important to know by that time, what programmes are intended to be supported under the aegis of the Danube strategy
The “three nos” and the “three yeses”. The Danube strategy is built on the principle of the “three nos”, that is to say, the countries which are part of the strategy must not, with regard to its implementation, put in place any new institutions or enact any new legislation or request new funding of the EU for its implementation. This principle will be honoured but Hungarian Government Commissioner responsible for the Danube Region Strategy Etelka Barsi-Pataky said that it should be supplemented by the principle of “three yeses”: “We say yes to better coordination, yes to more efficient utilisation of the existing resources and yes to creative ideas.”
Hahn called on national coordinators to focus on the interests of the region rather than on those of their own states. “The success of the Danube region strategy depends on whether everybody can consider the strategy as their own, and whether we can set such ambitious and realistic objectives that are considered equally important, by everyone”, he stated, adding that “projects of the Danube strategy should meet challenges, that can only be resolved if the participating states unite their forces”. He stressed that part of the work of coordination was to ensure that support should only be given to projects that do not serve solely local interests, and this was “the responsibility of the coordinators”.
Expected results. Speaking to reporters, Commissioner Hahn said that there was no timescale for implementation of the Danube strategy, the aim being to lay the foundations of long-term cooperation. However, proper schedules must be defined for the more than 100 projects included in the action plan, a task which, according to the commissioner, may be completed in the next two months. He said that it would take about 10 years for the people living in the Danube region to experience specific changes in their daily lives as a result of the strategy.
The 11 coordinators were appointed by Commissioner Hahn and Hungarian Foreign Minister János Martonyi in Budapest in February of this year (see EUROPE 10308). The strategy receives no specific funding from the EU or the member states. (G.B./transl.rt)