Brussels, 27/04/2012 (Agence Europe) - Little by little, the European Parliament is showing its hand in talks on cohesion policy. Rapporteurs on the general regulation applicable to European structural funds do not want to retain macroeconomic conditionality or the performance reserve in the legislative package proposed by the Commission for the future cohesion policy 2014-2020. They presented a first version of their draft amendments to the European Parliament's regional development committee (REGI), on Thursday 26 April. The latest version covering all amendments is due to be finalised on 8 May with a view to voting in July.
No to macroeconomic conditionality. Lambert Van Nistelrooij (EPP, Netherlands) and Constanze Krehl (S&D, Germany) are hitting home hard by proposing to quite simply delete the provision (Article 21) establishing macroeconomic conditionality. The provision in question allows the allocation of funding to be suspended or withdrawn if a member state acts in breach of the revised stability pact. “This is a very simple amendment!” Krehl said in an attempt to convince, saying “the regions must not be held responsible for the bad management of the state”. Opposed to the idea of having such a threat hanging over the regions, the rapporteur adds that, at the pedagogical level, this improves relations with regions and countries in difficulty, which creates a different climate to that when one is under threat. The REGI committee is tending to follow suit behind the two rapporteurs.
No to performance reserve. The proposal that 5% of funds should be set aside as a performance reserve also displeases the rapporteurs. Under such a scheme, amounts collected would be redistributed at the end of planning to the best pupils in order to encourage the regions to improve their results. Arguing that this mechanism could cause excessive competition between projects and cause more red tape, Krehl prefers to do away with the reserve. Although she does admit that the idea of rewarding good performance is good by definition, she states that the performance reserve is not necessary for attaining objectives. On this point also, MEPs of the REGI committee share the stance taken by the rapporteurs, except for Elisabeth Schroedter (Greens/EFA, Germany). In Schroedter's view, it is better to abolish all penalties and to keep only rewards. That, she felt, was a strategy to be recommended as it fosters performance and improves the quality of programmes.
Giving the common strategic framework appendix status. Once again, the rapporteurs expressed their firm intention to treat the common strategic framework (CSF) for the five funds as an addendum to the general regulation, rather than as a delegated act. The idea is that the Parliament should not lose control of talks on this. MEPs are all in favour of codecision legislative procedure for this document also, even though it may prove an arduous task to obtain consensus between themselves and with the Council. (MD/transl.jl)