Brussels, 31/10/2014 (Agence Europe) - Johannes Hahn is more than proud of having concluded cohesion policy reform and getting 27 partnership agreements out of 28 adopted before the end of his mandate.
Better equipped policy. The European Commissioner for Regional Development will be in charge of neighbourhood policy and enlargement, as from Monday. He is now beginning a new page and leaving behind him what he described as a “better equipped” cohesion policy to tackle the challenges currently facing Europe: energy dependency, unemployment and lack of competitiveness. Regional development policy is now better tailored to the needs of each member state and European regions. The signing of 27 partnership agreements between the member states and Commission for the strategic investment of structural funds (Ireland will sign this agreement over the next few weeks) is testimony to this success, he explained on Friday 31 October. Right up to the last minute, the Commissioner could not resist encouraging stakeholders to subsequently approve a number of other quality operational programmes.
Cretu Cabinet. It will now be up to Corina Cretu, the Romanian European Commissioner, to carry on with the task of regional development. Her second-in-command will be Mikel Landabaso as head of Cabinet. He has been working at DG Regio since 1990, where until now he has been the head of unit for thematic coordination and innovation. (MD)