During a discussion at the European Committee of the Regions (CoR) on Friday 23 March, Jan Olbrycht (EPP, Poland) European Parliament co-rapporteur for the own initiative report on the next multi-annual financial framework (MFF) warned the members of the CoR about the risk of exclusively focusing on cohesion policy in the future budget negotiations.
He considers that this strategy will not achieve the expected results. The MEP has called on the members to argue the case not just for cohesion policy but all EU policies. He believes that focusing on just one policy could be counter-productive and pointed out that many European programmes and funds outside of cohesion policy are horizontal and also affect the regions and cities. He hammered home the message that discussions must be systemic and not just focus on a specific policy.
In the same context as the European budget, Mr Olbrycht highlighted the need to rethink the cohesion policy goal. According to his analysis, if it is exclusively targeting territorial convergence, then budget cuts can be expected, as well as limited cover for cohesion member states. This proposal is included in the scenarios envisaged by the European Commission and referred to by certain net contributors such as the Netherlands and others.
He also pointed out that cohesion policy is based on two pillars: convergence and investments. For the first pillar, action could concentrate on the less advanced regions and member states, while the second could cover all European regions.
The MEP said that he was not in favour of a percentage approach that would enshrine cohesion policy allocations. This is because an approach based on relative terms would be problematic in the event of the number of priorities significantly increasing. The share of the cohesion policy budget cannot be the same if there are 10 or 15 different factors, he explained. Consequently, he argues that an amounts based approach would be more appropriate.
The changes planned by the Commission to include the European Social Fund (ESF) in a more extensive "umbrella" fund appears to be causing Mr Olbrycht some concern too. In his view, this kind of proposal would structurally change the fund, which would lose its regional dimension and shared management. He mooted the example of a cohesion policy that could possibly and exclusively cover a part of the regions and for the ESF to affect all European territory.
During his speech, Olbrycht said that he was worried by the ambiguity surrounding the figures put forward by the European Commission. He also wanted further clarification about what exactly the 5% and 10% cohesion policy budget cuts actually corresponded to. They have been regularly touted as figures by the Commissioner for the Budget, Günther Oettinger. This ambiguity has caused a lot of consternation among European experts and observers, following the presentation of the budget scenarios by the European Commission. Some of them have questions regarding the European Commission's calculation method and the free for all method regarding current and consistent prices (see EUROPE 11961).
Parliament and the COR agreed on a number of points relating to the future of the European budget, such as the need to have a spending level set at 1.3% of GNP and the objective of reaching a political agreement on the main points in the next MFF before the European elections (see EUROPE 11953, 11966). (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)