At the General Assembly of the Conference of Peripheral and Maritime Regions (CPMR), held in Madeira from 18 to 20 October, the member regions and the European Commission revisited the issue of maritime cooperation, bringing up once again the objections.
As a reminder, the European Commission has proposed to limit maritime cooperation to a transnational level, whereas it is cross-border in the current regulation on European territorial cooperation, to the great displeasure of the regions.
This is due in particular to the fact that transnational cooperation requires the participation of regions from several Member States in a project, whereas many projects operate on a bilateral basis. For the Commission, the nature of land and sea borders would not be the same, and it believes that emphasis should be placed on projects related to transnational services, explains one source.
Another point of discussion during the assembly was the issue of the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) and the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T). Here, several regions stressed the need to review the corridor plans, which date from 2013, taking better account of the peripheral and maritime regions, but also the outermost regions. While negotiations between the co-legislators are ongoing (see EUROPE 12090), the regions are calling for a higher co-financing rate and improved governance mechanisms with other European funds.
They also call for significant support for ports and maritime transport, not only to improve accessibility in peripheral maritime regions, but also to combat road congestion and climate change.
In general, the regions pointed to the redistribution between the funding headings of the next European budget to the detriment of the so-called traditional policies (see EUROPE 12111, see other news) in favour of the new priorities (defence, migration, innovation).
On Cohesion Policy, the regions regretted the budget cuts of around 10%, the strengthening of the link with the 'European Semester' budget process, in particular for the European Social Fund+, and the budget cuts in the Interreg programmes, as well as the possibility of transferring funding from one fund to another, in particular to InvestEU, the successor to the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI). (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)