Brussels, 10/10/2012 (Agence Europe) - Although the subject of what budget will be allocated to cohesion policy appears to be dominating the debate, rapporteurs on the legislative package reforming cohesion policy are having a close look at the current legislative negotiations. During a press conference on Wednesday 10 October, they made a statement within the context of the joint Parliament and Committee of the Regions' Open Days event.
The president of the regional development Parliamentary committee, Danuta Hübner (EPP, Poland), pointed out that in the cohesion policy field, “we are at a crossroads with budgetary negotiations and negotiations with the Council on legislative proposals”. The two are overlapping each other because without any figure given for cohesion policy, legislative reform cannot be adopted. Although Hübner is hoping that an agreement on the legislative package can still be reached before the end of year, she is not, however, ruling out the possibility of an agreement on the budget not being agreed until February or March of next year, which will delay finalising legislative aspects for cohesion policy.
Since the summer, MEPs have had a mandate for negotiating the cohesion package with the Council. The rapporteur for the common strategic framework, Lambert van Nistelrooij (EPP, the Netherlands), explained that every week Parliament and the Council had been meeting up for half a day. He explained that at this stage, the macro-economic conditions had not yet been discussed. According to details given to EUROPE by Hübner, a tough battle will be fought with regard to the partnerships and multilevel governance, “we want a code of conduct on partnerships”. The parliament is robustly defending these principles but the Council is not inclined to give any more powers to the regions. She concluded that she thought that for the remaining issues an agreement could be found. Van Nistelrooij declared that MEPs were particularly keen on defending flexibility in concentration with, for example, the introduction of computer systems and telecoms in priority funding. The rapporteur also said that “this chapter has not yet finished, the Council might agree to it but the Commission is not happy”. (MD/trans.fl)