On Thursday 11 April, the European Parliament's Committee on Regional Development (REGI) held a final debate with the European Commissioner for Regional Policy, Corina Crețu, taking a positive view of the political action taken over the past 5 years, but also looking to the future with great concern.
The president of the REGI committee, Iskra Mihaylova (ALDE, Bulgaria), gave a few figures on the committee's work over the past 5 years: Sixteen legislative acts, 25 opinions and 29 non-legislative reports were adopted. Above all, the MEP pointed out that Parliament had adopted its position at first reading on all the key texts of the next cohesion policy: the Common Provisions Regulation, regulations on the Cohesion Fund (CF) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), the Interreg regulation, and the regulation on the cross-border mechanism.
However, the bitterness was palpable in all of the Members' remarks in the face of the current deadlock on the umbrella text for cohesion policy (see EUROPE 12212/15). “I'm obviously disappointed! We have really worked hard to ensure that we are ready for the next programming period [...] unfortunately, you know what the [EU] Council is doing”, said the Commissioner, referring to the request from 14 Member States to stop interinstitutional negotiations. “Our hands are tied by the [EU] Council", she lamented, regretting as well the delay in the negotiations on the next multiannual financial framework for 2021-2027.
Originally, the European Commission wanted the next multiannual financial framework to be adopted before the European elections. It is now expected that this agreement will be reached in the autumn. But more and more observers consider that an agreement is likely to be reached only in the second half of 2020.
However, the Commissioner was optimistic, underlined the “legacy” left by this committee to the next Parliament and hoped that the next Parliament would resume interinstitutional negotiations with the EU Council as soon as possible, or even immediately after the elections, in order to be able to start work as soon as possible on the programming of funds. She said she would ask the ministers to move forward on this legislative package to avoid repeating the delay of the current period.
A Commissioner soon to be a Deputy. Mrs Crețu said that she intended to participate in the struggle after the European elections to support her proposals as a Commissioner. She is running outside the socialist lists. Some can imagine her taking over the chairmanship of the REGI Committee.
If elected, the Commissioner is likely to encounter the current Romanian Minister for European Funds, Rovana Plumb, who is also running in the European elections on the Romanian Socialist Party list. The two politicians met in Bucharest on Friday 12 April for the informal meeting on cohesion. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)