Luxembourg, 24/04/2012 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday 24 April, the General Affairs Council in Luxembourg managed to agree on a partial general approach on cohesion policy for the period 2014-2020. It was unable, however, to establish a clear link between cohesion and country-specific recommendations, which would have had the advantage of ensuring that cohesion policy performance was in line with the objectives of the EU 2020 strategy.
The partial general approach relates to six elements of the package of legislative proposals submitted last autumn by the European Commission in order to reform cohesion policy with a view to the next 2014-2020 programming period. The agreement concerns the programming chapters, ex ante conditionality, management and control, monitoring and evaluation, eligibility and major projects
With regard to ex ante conditionality, there is the partnership agreement that member states and the Commission will sign before programmes are funded, as well as criteria that must be respected in order to merit the payment of funds. The EU27 underline that the principle of proportionality must be respected. The section on major projects brings in the possibility for the Commission to judge by itself whether or not it should resort to using external auditing services for assessing programmes financed up to over €250 million by European money, in a concern for remaining independent.
Although the partial general approach was not greatly disputed during the General Affairs Council, delegations defended a number of points of view. The Presidency document provided for country-specific recommendations to be a reference for national cohesion programming documents.
But certain member states, such as the United Kingdom and certain cohesion countries, would prefer the objectives of the European semester to prevail. These are in the minority, but in view of the determination of these countries, the Council opted to leave the initial proposal of the Presidency in brackets, in order to discuss the issue in greater detail during the forthcoming negotiations.
Danish Minister for European Affairs Nicolai Wammen took pains to stress that in any case, nothing was really a done deal until everything had been approved. It is still possible to re-negotiate each article, if the outcome of other negotiations requires this. Nonetheless, the partial document approved by the EU27 already constitutes a large step forward, to the delight of the European commissioner in charge of cohesion policy, Johannes Hahn. He confirmed at the end of the Council that he was satisfied with progress made, stressing that the structural changes he has instigated aim mainly to make the cohesion policy more efficient. (MD/transl.fl)