In 2024, the European Technical Support Instrument (TSI) for reforms will support 170 projects across all Member States to implement 307 reforms aimed at strengthening administrative capacity at national and regional level and accelerating the climate and digital transitions.
On Tuesday 26 March, the European Commissioner for Cohesion and Reforms, Elisa Ferreira, welcomed the “enthusiastic” response from Member States regarding the possibilities for support from the TSI, which this year will be endowed with €120 million. She emphasised the importance of this instrument insofar as “the quality of the use made of European funds increasingly depends on the quality of the institutions” responsible for implementing the projects supported on the ground.
For example, the TSI will help the Romanian Ministry of Education to train educational staff to integrate socio-emotional learning into teaching and to promote the responsible use of technology and social media in school and extra-curricular activities. In the area of the climate transition, the European instrument will help to speed up the construction of the Rail Baltica rail link in the Baltic States, and it will help Estonia and Lithuania to produce more sustainable fuels for aviation.
Spanish regional authorities and a German ministry will be looking at how innovative technologies can support entrepreneurship, said Ms Ferreira. In her view, the TSI should also be used to anticipate upheaval, and not simply react to profound societal changes such as demographic change or the spread of artificial intelligence.
It should be noted that in 2024, many cross-border projects will be developed through inter-state cooperation (43 projects) and inter-regional cooperation (38 projects). Belgium, Finland, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, for example, will attempt to identify the best solutions for financing their national biodiversity strategies. In Poland, municipalities will be supported in the provision of integration services for younger generations of immigrants.
The TSI experiment must be continued after the end of this legislature, said Ms Ferreira, underlining its qualitative contribution.
See the TSI 2024 work programme: https://aeur.eu/f/bik (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)