Brussels, 25/01/2016 (Agence Europe) - During a visit to Slovenia for the launch of the EU Strategy for the Alpine Region (EUSALP) on Monday 25 January, the European Commissioner for Cohesion Policy, Corina Cretu, outlined the major cohesion policy challenges for the future: flexibility; European economic governance; simplification and performance.
The Commission is currently beginning its first look in to the future of post-2020 cohesion policy (see EUROPE 11377). The Commissioner believes that the refugee crisis has revealed existing inflexibility and inertia in this policy. She considers it necessary to certainly have a stable investment in the medium-term but that this needs to be adapted to new European priorities. She stated “Flexibility must be a principle at the heart of the new policies and financial framework”. The Commissioner announced that a reprogramming of European regional funds was possible in view of responding to migratory pressure. For the time being, only Italy has used this mechanism (see EUROPE 11426).
According to the Commissioner, economic governance is another major challenge. The 2014-20 programmes will, for the first time, be based around EUROPE 2020 Strategy objectives and the recommendations made by the different member states. The challenge now is one of putting things into practice and “demonstrating that this alignment on the objectives bears its fruit in terms of impact”. Finally, the Commission has published a study drawing up a balance sheet of the operational programmes in each country, which received a rather lukewarm response from MEPs (see EUROPE 11468).
The third challenge is by far the most important one for many regional actors and involves simplification. The Commissioner indicated in this connection that the high-level group on simplification was expected to provide a report and put forward its first recommendations very soon. Cretu acknowledged that she was seeking to improve the use of the available solutions in the context of the current period but warned that effective simplification could only be done in the framework of the next programming period.
According to one stakeholder involved in regional policies, simplification would simply remain on the Commission's wish list, as long as the European Court of Auditors demanded justification for all the different amounts spent and that member states resort to “gold plating” or adding national rules and imperatives on top of those introduced by the Commission. The only solution would be to adopt a proportionate approach in auditing based on the irregularities recorded, explained our same source, a solution that Germany actually proposed quite recently (see EUROPE 11433). Some regional stakeholders also have concerns that further expansion in the Economic and Monetary Union would lead to a separate budget between the eurozone and the European Union, which could make cohesion policy even more complicated.
Finally, the last point focused on by the Commissioner involves performance. She said that “requirements for submitting accounts… should be stepped up in the future”. In this perspective, the Commissioner considers that it is imperative to develop efficient instruments for measuring the progress achieved on the ground. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)