The European Commission announced on Friday 4 March the suspension of all cross-border cooperation under the European Neighbourhood Instrument (ENI CBC) as well as the Interreg territorial cooperation programme for the Baltic Sea region with Russia and Belarus.
“This means, among others, that no further payments will be made to Russia or Belarus”, the EU institution explained in a press release. The suspension has immediate effect for the nine ENI CBC programmes involving Russia and Belarus and for the transnational Interreg Baltic Sea Region programme under the 2014-2020 programming period.
The Commission is studying the legal and operational possibilities of strengthening the existing cross-border cooperation programmes between the EU countries (Poland, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia) and Ukraine as well as the participation of Ukraine in the ENI CBC programme for the Black Sea basin or in the transnational Interreg Danube programme, the release says.
The European Committee of the Regions mobilised
On the evening of Wednesday 2 March, the European Committee of the Regions (CoR) adopted a declaration ahead of the 9th Summit of Regions and Cities (see other news) to express its solidarity with the Ukrainians.
In this statement, the Committee calls for the immediate activation of the ‘EU mechanism of civil protection for humanitarian assistance’.
For their part, the signatories of the declaration confirm that the cities and regions are ready to mobilise all their available resources to ensure that humanitarian aid is delivered to Ukraine at the request of its mayors. They also call on European local and regional authorities to welcome refugees, and on the European Commission to specifically support Ukraine’s border regions in this process.
The Commissioner for Cohesion Policy and Reforms, Elisa Ferreira, confirmed on Thursday 3 March that she will present a series of measures next week, if adopted by the College of Commissioners, to help European regions and cities deal with the refugee crisis (see EUROPE 12903/5). (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)