Brussels, 21/05/2012 (Agence Europe) - Spain will receive €939 million from the Cohesion Fund sooner than scheduled for projects already carried out in the fields of transport and the environment. It is a matter of accelerating the payments in order to sign off projects funded by the Cohesion Policy. This will mean that the beneficiaries will be reimbursed sooner. There are a further 185 projects to conclude and the announced decision should help to speed up the process. This was discussed on Monday 21 May by European Commissioner for Regional Development Johannes Hahn and Spanish Finance Minister Cristiano Montoro. They also discussed the reprogramming of cohesion policy programmes to bring them closer into line with the objectives of the EU 2020 strategy. After the meeting, the Commissioner said that both sides wished to “jointly strengthen EU cohesion policy, in order to better help regions to get out of the crisis. I emphasised the importance of the Union's EUROPE 2020 project and the need for both current and future programmes to be aligned with it”. (MD/transl.fl)