Brussels, 20/11/2012 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday 20 November in Brussels, European ministers responsible for European affairs agreed on a partial general approach on the two final chapters of the legislative package reforming cohesion policy: financial management and the common strategic framework. This agreement does not determine the final agreement but, according to the Cypriot minister for European affairs, Andreas Mavroyiannis, the president of the General Affairs Council, “it is an excellent sign that enables us to make progress in meetings with the European Parliament”. He therefore intends to step up negotiations to conclude this package, so that member states and the regions are able to prepare programmes financed out of structural funds, as soon as possible. This partial general approach completes the three other approaches obtained at the Council this year.
Financial management involves annual pre-funding and interim payments made by the Commission for programmes, rules regulating the closure of operational programmes and financial corrections in the event of irregularities being detected. The Polish, Slovak and Italian delegations insisted that these corrections provide legal security and asked for a clear definition to be provided regarding its implementation (a declaration on this subject has been annexed to the partial approach). Hungary expressed a preference for ex ante measures for preventing mistakes, instead of introducing ex post sanctions. The Czech Republic also appealed for strict evaluation criteria and equal treatment among member states with regard to their corrections.
The Common Strategic Framework stipulates efficient use of the five structural funds and effective coordination between them. The Commission pointed out that procedures for adopting them was still a subject of disagreement between the institutions. The Commission would like the annexes to them to be amended by delegated acts and regrets that the Council decided to remove this reference. In terms of the content, the Commission considers that too many elements within it have become optional.
The Cypriot presidency presented the conclusions of the informal meeting on cohesion that took place at the beginning of November and which focused on policy efficiency and its governance. It appears that the idea of a Cohesion Council was not ultimately supported by member states. The British argued in defence of regular contact being maintained with regard to this policy, without necessarily setting up a new structure for these discussions. (MP/trans/fl)