Brussels, 24/07/2014 (Agence Europe) - “The sixth report on economic, social and territorial cohesion shows that EU regional policy has made a big difference in reducing the impact of the crisis, but development gaps are on the rise again and the unemployment tragedy has still not been adequately tackled”, said President of the European Committee of the Regions (CoR) Michel Lebrun, commenting on the report just published by the European Commission (see EUROPE 11127).
According to Lebrun, implementation of the youth employment initiative and the increased role of the European social funds “will considerably put to the test our capacity to coordinate all the players involved at EU, national, regional and local level”. As regards the expected outcome of the cohesion policy reform (2014-20), the CoR president underlined a contradiction: the stress the Commission has placed on worsening problems (unemployment, poverty and competitiveness gaps among regions) is in open contrast to the idea of freezing funds (included in the reform) in countries whose national governments have failed to respect fiscal consolidation targets. The CoR argues that such a rule risks introducing an element of uncertainty in the regional multi-annual investment plans aimed at tackling those problems, which will have a destabilising effect. (LC)