On Tuesday 20 February, MEPs removed mention of rejection by Parliament of macroeconomic conditions for granting structural and investment funds from an own-initiative report on regions lagging behind in development, brought by Michela Giuffrida (S&D, Italy) and adopted by a large majority (31 votes for, 3 against and 3 abstentions) within the regional development committee.
The political divergence between the groups regarding the place of macroeconomic conditions is visible, given the lack of a definite stance by the relevant parliamentary committee. Further to a compromise amendment, MEPs are now content to underline the importance of good economic governance to achieve a good overall performance for structural and investment funds. In addition, MEPs call for an analysis and, possibly, review of the link between the European Semester budgetary process and cohesion policy.
The initial text submitted by Giuffrida was, however, more conclusive and reaffirmed the “strong opposition (of Parliament) to macroeconomic conditionality”. Furthermore, the proposal by the rapporteur to gear future conditionalities to fundamental values, coexistence and solidarity, rather than macroeconomic conditions, was deleted by an amendment adopted, and carried by the EPP and ECR.
Fine-tuned European action for better help to regions lagging behind in development
On the subject of regions lagging behind in development, the report calls on the European Commission and the member states to develop strategies, programmes and actions adapted to the needs of each of the 47 regions lagging behind, whether these be low growth regions (regions for which the GDP is around the European average but where the rate of growth is slow) or regions with low revenue (where GDP is weak but growth is strong).
To achieve this, MEPs suggest definition of the regions lagging behind in development should be at the Nuts III level, i.e. the smallest unit of analysis, by taking into account social and economic conditions in order to better direct European funding. The question of criteria is also tackled and MEPs are calling once more for the GDP criterion to be completed with social and demographic criteria.
In partnership with the World Bank, the European Commission is already developing specific strategies for supporting regions with low revenue and low growth (see EUROPE 11799) on the basis of a report devoted to those regions. These projects are, however, of worry to Parliament, especially in the light of the recent proposals made by the European Commission which foresees possible concentration of the future cohesion policy on the least developed regions only (see EUROPE 11961). (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)