Brussels, 16/01/2013 (Agence Europe) - French MEPs Marie-Thérèse Sanchez-Schmid and Alain Cadec have continued to hammer home their message, calling for a more ambitious budget for Europe, in particular for cohesion. They describe as "worrying" the budgetary negotiations underway for the financial programming period 2014-2020: "in Mr Van Rompuy's latest opposed compromise, the envelope allocated to the transition regions has been cut by 13.7%, and the one for the developed regions has been reduced by 8.3%. Worse still, credit for territorial cooperation, which makes it possible to finance cross-border projects with high European added value, has been slashed by 27%!". "The cohesion policy is a fantastic investment lever for the competitiveness of all of our regions", said Marie-Thérèse Sanchez-Schmid at the joint debate on cohesion held by the European Parliament on the evening of Monday 14 January. Other MEPs also spoke out in favour of a strong budget for cohesion and expressed their concerns at this joint debate. (MD/transl.fl)