Eric von Breska, director of services for regional and urban policy (DG REGIO) at the European Commission, says that the Commission wants to focus on innovative forms of finance for post-2020 Cohesion Policy and a larger role for financial instruments. He was speaking to MEPs and national parliamentarians on this subject at the European Parliament on Wednesday 22 November.
"We want to focus on future innovative forms of financing and thinking moving a bit away from grants and moving in the direction of loans, guarantees or equity. (…) This does not mean that we will abandon grants – it is clear that there are some areas where grants are the only solution of financing for the simple fact that they are no revenues generated in this area and you can use only financial instruments where you have revenues."
Von Breska insisted that Cohesion Policy had to remain a policy rather than a group of investment instruments, but "having said that, we want further increase their use in the future."
Many regions fear a prevalence of financial instruments in the future Cohesion Policy given the importance laid on the European Strategic Investment Fund (EFSI), which is strongly connected with the current European Commission. This line is being explored, however, in order to deal with likely cuts in the future for the Cohesion Policy.
The high-ranking official said: "The delivery mechanism of cohesion policy has become too complex – we are thinking about radical simplification. The future regulation will be shorter, much shorter, will be much simpler, the rules will much simpler, there will be less controls, there will be less audits, there will be less reporting."
In this connection, the Commission is considering making greater use of national authorities and rules in the future. "This requires trust of all sides and this is certainly not always easy -we will try our best to get there, knowing that realities on the ground are different and we will need to see how far we can go on that." His statements hint at differentiated control rules.
Incentives for structural reforms. Von Breska said the Commission is considering a system of positive incentives to help the member states carry out structural reforms, but said they hadn’t yet found the solution.
The European Commission is planning to take account of his proposal for the upcoming Cohesion Policy and the next Multiannual Financial Framework in May 2018 under the Bulgarian Presidency of the Council of the EU. In early November, Bulgaria’s regional development minister, Lilyana Pavlova, presented MEPs in the EPP group with her country’s priorities for the Cohesion Policy (see EUROPE 11901). (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)