During his speech to the 7th Cohesion Forum on Monday 26 June, the European Commission Vice President responsible for the Junker investment plan, Jyrki Katainen, provided his audience with assurances by declaring that in the future, he wanted clarification of the roles between the European Fund for Strategic Investment (EFSI) and cohesion policy.
The speech was eagerly awaited, given the significant tension regarding what position financial instruments would have in future cohesion policy. Many regions have concerns that a substantial increase in financial instruments will be done to the disadvantages of the future cohesion policy subsidies.
In this regard, the Vice President was keen to provide assurances and immediately stated that cohesion policy was a key investment policy and should remain so. According to the Vice President, financial instruments should complement structural and investment funds in an effort to strengthen the impact they have at an investment level. He added that, “the use of financial instruments should not be an objective in itself” but that it should be, “a means of attaining our policy objectives more efficiently”. By focusing on areas in which these instruments are more effective than subsidies, “Financial instruments have a very different role in cohesion policy and will continue to have this role”, he explained.
These ideas provided some significant reassurance to a number of organisations such as the Conference of Peripheral and Maritime Regions (CPMR), which had requested this exact clarification in its policy document on post-2020 cohesion policy adopted last week (see EUROPE 11815). Similarly, the Committee of the Regions (CoR) is also expected to be satisfied because it requested that financial instruments be used, “only when it is considered that they will be useful at a practical level”.
Strengthening ex ante conditions and introducing single raft of rules. The Commissioner also took two hard lines. First of all, he announced that ex ante conditions would be maintained and strengthened in order to encourage structural reforms. In this regard, the Commissioner used the term “positive” incentives – to counteract the fears that cohesion policy would be used “punitively”, as the Commissioner for Regional Policy, Corina Crețu had feared (see EUROPE 11782). Mr Katainen also resurrected a strong proposal put forward by the Commissioner for Regional Policy, namely, the adoption of a single and unique raft of rules for radical simplification.
At a more general level, the Vice President took a position in favour of a more flexible policy to respond to ever-changing situations, which would be based on results rather than on control. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)