The Conference of Peripheral Maritime Regions (CPMR) is concerned about the progressive splitting of structural and investment funds due to “centrifugal trends” working against cohesion policy over the period 2021-2027, in an analysis paper published on Wednesday 8 December.
The organisation points to the increase in the number of European funds and instruments within the framework of structural and cohesion policy (e.g. the Just Transition Fund) and above all to the increasing fragmentation of these funds in increasingly dispersed legal frameworks (such as the ‘exit’ of the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development, which is no longer a structural fund).
Legal “fissures” are also appearing in the European Social Fund plus (ESF+) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), according to the organisation, which foresees a risk of gradual separation in the absence of a common strategic framework. In addition, the Recovery and Resilience Plan creates further uncertainty.
This is bad news, according to the CPMR, in the short term it adds a significant administrative burden (see EUROPE 12833/10) and in the long term it risks affecting the design and governance as well as the budget of the post-27 cohesion policy.
To read the study: https://bit.ly/31Q33Vk (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)