Commissioner for Cohesion and Reform Elisa Ferreira identified the lack of visibility as one of the main difficulties facing cohesion policy during a public exchange with Committee of the Regions President Apostolos Tzitzikostas at the opening of the Week of Regions and Cities on Monday 12 October.
“Whatever we do, we do it for their (citizens’ - editors note) sake, this is not obvious for everybody all time”, the Commissioner lamented, regretting the fact that, more often than not, the public’s attention is focused on cases of fraud. However, she recalled, the cases of fraud are minor, less than 1%.
For the Commissioner, the answer cannot come from the European Commission alone, but from all local and regional actors and stakeholders. Thus, for the Commissioner, the success of cohesion policy can only be achieved through communication and the exchange of good practice. “We have to tell them (the citizens - editor’s note) that they are Europeans and that they are treated as such”.
For Mrs Ferreira, the other front that really needs to be focused on is the quality of the projects selected. “Please work on the selection of the right project so that we don’t have this criticism about what we did was not the most adequate”, she told local and regional representatives.
The lack of visibility of cohesion policy and its action with citizens also in the context of the pandemic (see European Parliament proposal - EUROPE 12554/1) remains one of the major difficulties of this policy.
Already, the Commissioner for Regional Policy, Corina Crețu, had taken action to try to make this policy more visible with an action plan (see EUROPE 11774/7). According to a study by Cohesify in 2018, traditional communication methods remain the most effective (see EUROPE 12011/18). (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)