The European Commission wants to develop advisory support tools adapted to the individual cases of the outermost regions (ORs) to help them make the most of European policies and programmes in the wake of the pandemic and the explosion in raw material and energy prices, in a communication presented in Strasbourg on Tuesday 3 May. However, no legislative initiatives seem to be planned.
These advisory support tools will be deployed on request to assist the outermost regions in drawing up regional development plans, reforms and investment programmes, under the REACT-EU initiative and the 2021-2027 cohesion policy.
The aim is to help these regions create synergies between the opportunities offered by EU funds and programmes, including the European Regional Development Fund, the European Social Fund Plus (ESF+), the Cohesion Fund and the Connecting Europe Facility.
Interviewed by EUROPE, the Commissioner for Cohesion and Reforms, Elisa Ferreira, confirmed that the unit in charge of the ORs will be reinforced. The institution intends to create a portal on the possibilities for the outermost regions to benefit from the various EU funds and policy initiatives. It will launch a series of information sessions in this context.
Furthermore, the institution intends to take better account of the specificities of these regions when revising regulations and guidelines on State aid and in the various impact assessments.
It will also ensure the “resilience” of supply chains in the outermost regions in the event of a major crisis under the future Single Market Emergency Instrument (see EUROPE 12936/3).
In the end, few binding measures
However, no legislative initiatives or binding measures are included in this Communication. The European Commission explains this in the first pages of the document: “While the EU plays a key role in contributing to unlocking the outermost regions’ growth potential, their well-being and development fundamentally rely on choices and actions by the regions themselves and their Member States”.
Therefore, the Communication, while presenting a number of initiatives to be developed at EU level, encourages action by these regions and their Member States, for example to take account of their specificities in cross-cutting policies and instruments, including the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) and cohesion policy funds, as well as in horizontal tools such as the Technical Support Instrument (TSI).
The General Affairs Council is expected to adopt the EU Council’s conclusions on the strategy on 21 June.
As a reminder, last September, MEPs adopted an own-initiative report inviting the European Commission to present a new European strategy for the outermost regions to face the challenges of this century (see EUROPE 12790/11). Earlier this year, in July 2021, the European Commission opened a public consultation to feed into its plan to renew the EU’s strategic approach for the ORs (see EUROPE 12758/24).
The outermost regions are: - Guadeloupe, French Guiana, Martinique, Mayotte, Reunion and Saint-Martin (France); - Azores and Madeira (Portugal); - the Canary Islands (Spain). Taking into account their specific situation is enshrined in the European treaties, in particular in Article 349 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU (TFEU).
To consult the strategy: https://aeur.eu/f/1gm (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)