Brussels, 24/07/2015 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday 23 July, the European Commission gave its approval to the Hungarian operation programme devoted exclusively to strengthening the national administration and public services. This is the last of the country's operational programmes.
Of the €935 million announced cost, around €795 million will come from European funds - with 75.7% of this from the European social fund (ESF) and 24.3% from the cohesion fund, by virtue of the new arrangements set in 2014 (see EUROPE 10967).
The goal of this operational programme is principally to improve the efficiency of the Hungarian administration, said Social Affairs Commissioner Marianne Thyssen. To this end, close on 400 projects to reduce administrative processing times will be financed and 250 e-government projects - that is, the use of information and communication technologies to improve the efficiency of service delivery in the public sector - will be launched. Some 63,800 civil servants will follow skills development programmes and around one thousand municipalities will be linked into a public administration information system.
The ESF, which is dedicated to developing human capital, has been assigned the task of helping administrations and public service providers in convergence regions (those with per capita GDP of less than 75% of the EU average) to be more efficient and effective.
“Today, we have adopted the last Hungarian programme for 2014-2020”, said Regional Policy Commissioner Corina Cretu (our translation). Most member states have had their all operational programmes approved. Only Spain, Italy and Sweden remain to complete the process, the institutions indicate. (Pascal Hansens)