Brussels, 06/03/2012 (Agence Europe) - The Committee of the Regions (CoR) has refined its analysis of the Commission proposals on the next cohesion policy planning period, 2014-2020. The CoR's commission for territorial cohesion policy (COTER) approved opinions on the various structural funds at its meeting in Lisbon on 5 March. These will now be put to the next CoR plenary session for approval.
Common strategic framework. Catiuscia Marini (PES, Italy) tackled the common strategic framework. While expressing support for strategic choices, such as the introduction of the new category of transition regions, she remains intransigent in her opposition to any macroeconomic conditionality. This would allow payment of structural funding to be suspended if a beneficiary state fails to apply good economic governance. Marini, like many others from the regions, sees it as being unfair that local authorities could be penalised for the errors of member states.
Welcoming the principle of thematic concentration of investments proposed by the Commission, Marini warned, however, of excessive use of thresholds and fixed percentage for resources allocation which would make the designing of operational programmes too complex. Like many in the Council, she called for greater flexibility and recommended that the regions be more involved in partnership contracts, alongside member states.
Marini's big new idea is, instead of devoting 5% of available resources to a performance reserve as proposed by the Commission, to have a “flexibility reserve” made up of unspent funds, to finance, for instance, experimental initiatives in the areas of smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. Returning to the desire for simplification adopted by the Commission, she puts forward a number of suggestions in her report, such as rationalising controls and audits and reducing managing authorities' reporting duties.
ERDF, ESF and cohesion fund. More flexibility and a softening of required percentages in thematic fund allocations are also among the main requests included in the opinion on the regulation for the European Funds for Regional Development (ERDF) drafted by Michael Schneider (EPP, Germany). He also called for the use of a wider definition of areas with natural or demographic handicaps, such as the islands, and mountainous or sparsely populated regions.
Konstantinos Simitsis (PES, Greece), having examined the Commission proposals on the European Social Fund (ESF), warned of the risk of the ESF becoming a tool exclusively devoted to the EUROPE 2020 strategy, losing its function as a lever of social cohesion. He also regrets the absence of any reference to promoting flexicurity in the labour market in. He opposed the strict method for setting ESF shares by category of region and called for indicative percentages to be translated into shares tailored to the actual needs of local communities.
Romeo Stavarache (ALDE, Romania), giving consideration to the proposals on the European Cohesion Fund, was critical about the €10 billion that could be re-directed to the Connecting Europe Facility, to finance transport infrastructure projects. He felt this budget is unclear and that there is a danger of failing to prepare mature cross-border projects. He would also like to see the energy performance of housing to be included in the expenditure priorities. (MD/transl.rt)