Brussels, 27/05/2016 (Agence Europe) - At a meeting on Tuesday 24 May, the Conference of Peripheral and Maritime Regions (CPMR) gave European Commissioner for Regional Policy Corina Cretu three possible scenarios for better integrating islands into the future cohesion policy.
The first scenario would be to envisage earmarking financing from the European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF) at the national level specifically for islands. The CPMR stated that this type of mechanism already existed for the current period. Indeed 5% of the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) is intended for urban sustainable development. The peripheral and maritime regions believe that a similar mechanism could therefore be planned for islands.
The second scenario put forward by the regions would be to create a special unit within the European Commission's Directorate General for Regional Policy (DG REGIO) for a programme of innovative action specifically for islands, following the example that already exists for the outermost regions (OR) (see EUROPE 11543).
The third scenario would focus on the article on partnership in Regulation 1303/2013 on cohesion policy. Here, the CPMR would like the islands to be better taken into account in the process of developing partnership agreements in compliance with Article 174, which provides for account to be taken of rural areas and regions that suffer from natural handicaps and/or serious demographic handicaps.
The problem of insularity is raised on a regular basis. In February, MEPs adopted a resolution on island regions in order to attract the European Commission's attention (see EUROPE 114873). At the end of the meeting, Cretu did not reportedly take any commitment, but agreed to study the scenarios.
Refugee crisis. The issue of the refugee crisis was also addressed. Here, Cretu apparently said she was inclined to equip the cohesion policy with a thematic objective for hosting and integrating refugees and migrants, a source told EUROPE. The funding for hosting refugees came up again last week with the proposal of Germany's minister for cooperation and development, Gerd Müller, who suggested using 10% of the European budget for the migration crisis. “It's clear that this 10% would be taken from the cohesion policy”, a European source stated. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)