Brussels, 17/10/2012 (Agence Europe) - The thirteen governors of the Greek regions will meet the European Commissioner with responsibility for the Cohesion Policy for the forthcoming programming period starting in 2014, and Regional Development, Johannes Hahn, at the end of this week. Together, they will review the priorities and also look at what could start working better now, amongst other things by breathing new life into stalled projects in the list of priority projects drawn up last year and for which the structural funds have been reprogrammed.
Hahn will be in Athens from Thursday 18 October. He will meet the governors of the 13 Greek regions on Friday morning. Although they will discuss the broad outlines of the reformed cohesion policy post-2014, they will also assess the impact of the cohesion policy in Greece today and, above all, what has to be done now to make full use of the European money available.
40 projects on the shelf. The services of the Commission and the Greek authorities have already worked on reprogramming 181 projects targeting growth and employment, further to the Commissioner's visit to Greece just under a year ago. However, in this list of priority projects, 40 are believed to have been shelved, the Commissioner's spokesperson, Shirin Wheeler, told EUROPE. These must be put back on track before the deadline of 2013, and work benefiting from European structural funds must be speeded up. There is no doubt that this will be central to the Commissioner's visit to Greece, because these projects selected represent some €1 billion in European structural funds, and are designed to create over 100,000 jobs in the long run.
Business friendly. Johannes Hahn will also travel to Thessaloniki to meet representatives of the business world in the north of Greece. They will also carry out a joint analysis of European measures which could help to relaunch the economy. They will in particular look at ensuring better access to funding for small and medium-sized enterprises, and to create a climate conducive to business in Greece. With red tape still burdening this climate, the Commissioner is expected to stress that a modern economy must be able to count on modern administration. (MD/transl.fl)