Brussels, 19/12/2013 (Agence Europe) - The commission for territorial cohesion (COTER) of the Committee of the Regions and the European Parliament committee for regional development (REGI) met on 17 December. This meeting was to discuss how to implement the reformed cohesion policy whose budget for 2014-2020 will be €325.15 billion. MEPs and regional elected representatives are extremely concerned by this issue. They have been particularly concerned by the ex ante conditions, macro-economic conditionality, absorption of structural funds and the possibility of combining funds into the same programme. The chair of the REGI committee, Danuta Hübner (EPP, Poland) said that the next step would be signing the partnership agreement as soon as possible. The chairman of the COTER committee, Marek Wozniak, Marshall of the Wielkopolska region of Poland, also said it was essential that the partnership and multi-level governance principle should not be sidelined. The CoR has concerns that, hitherto, that has not been entirely the case because preparations for the reforms and partnership agreement were carried out without the reform being adopted and therefore on an incomplete legal basis. (MD/transl.fl)