Maritime cooperation, changes in structured cooperation, alignment of transnational priorities with macro-regional and sea basin strategies, and a redefinition of geographical coverage: the Member States have made many changes to the Interreg Regulation related to the special provisions for European territorial cooperation after 2020.
First, this concerns cross-border maritime cooperation: in their partial mandate adopted on Wednesday 29 May by their Permanent Representatives to the EU (Coreper), the Member States reintroduced the principle of cross-border maritime cooperation in several of the Regulation’s articles.
This is good news for the maritime and island regions, which took a negative view of the Commission's proposal to limit maritime cooperation to the transnational level. Others are sceptical, fearing that the funds will be scattered, given that the budget for European territorial cooperation planned by the Commission is being reduced.
Alignment with macro-regional strategies
Another important change is the alignment of the priorities of transnational programmes with macro-regional and sea basin strategies. When an Interreg programme covers the same geographical area as a macro-regional or sea basin strategy, it is now mandatory that at least 75% of the total European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) be aligned.
This is good news for the regions, which were unhappy with the Romanian Presidency of the Council of the EU's plan. The latter envisaged a phase-in period before reaching 100% alignment. This proposal would potentially have caused administrative confusion, as the priorities of these strategies are not always consistent.
A return to the current structure
Member States have also modified the structure of the Regulation to reflect the main features of the current structure. Thus, the Member States have reinstated in Article 3 the following components of the European Territorial Cooperation (ETC) objective: - the interregional cooperation programme, Interreg Europe (a network for the exchange of best practices between public actors); - the URBACT programme (a programme to support cities in developing a sustainable urban model). These two programmes had been removed from the Commission's proposal.
They also deleted component 5, on interregional innovation investments, which aims to strengthen interregional innovation projects that have the potential to develop a European value chain.
These investments have been added to the EU Council's mandate under the Regulation on the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and the Cohesion Fund on the European Urban Initiative (Article 10).
This return to the current structure has not been welcomed by the European Commission, we are told. The institution is concerned about the budget allocation that will ultimately be decided, which may not keep pace with the expansion of the programmes introduced by the Member States.
Spanish request
A change has been introduced in Article 5, on geographical coverage for the purposes of transnational cooperation, to also cover the outermost regions. The reason: Spain could have a transnational project with Morocco, via the Canary Islands, an archipelago that is an outermost region.
In addition, Member States have amended the definition of the regions to be covered by the European Regional Development Fund for cross-border cooperation. This reportedly includes the NUTS 3 regions (the smallest regional level in the EU) along all internal and external land borders with non-Member States and all NUTS 3 level regions of the Union along maritime borders separated by a maximum of 150 km. This last addition is raising the hackles of the island regions, many of which would be excluded. This modality currently exists but had been deleted in the European Commission's proposal.
It should be noted that many points within the negotiating box for the next financial perspective have remained in brackets and will have to be decided in the coming months.
To consult the EU Council’s partial mandate: https://bit.ly/2wAS27g (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)