The European Commissioner for Cohesion Policy and Reform, Elisa Ferreira, explains to Agence Europe the importance of the European Union’s budget in revitalising areas experiencing difficulties in their development or transition. She underlines the importance of the quality of public administration in carrying out local initiatives. (Interview by Lionel Changeur and Mathieu Bion on Thursday 16 May)
Agence Europe - Since 2019, you have travelled to almost 90 regions in the EU. What are the main messages you get from people on the ground and what is the added value of cohesion policy for these territories?
Elisa Ferreira - It is interesting to visit all these regions and to understand how different and valuable they are. You have regions with incredible historical patrimony, others with an incredible natural beauty. This diversity is really one of the most important wealth of Europe.
Having said this, in certain regions, cohesion policy is almost the only European policy that they feel, even if some politicians sometimes try to hide the concrete achievements of European solidarity. Cohesion policy is indeed the solution to very concrete problems. Sometimes it’s a road, a digital connection. In other cases, it is the saving of energy in the buildings, a school or a health centre.
I’ve been trying to visit regions that have certain problems, are less developed or are in transition. The most important message that I bring with me is the need to not only look at the money, but also to take adequate care of the capacity of the public administration on the ground. The quality of what you do with the funds depends on the vision you have, the decisions you take, your capacity as a decentralised entity to implement what you have decided.
As we celebrate the 20th anniversary of the accession of ten Member States from Central and Eastern Europe, what’s the real added value of cohesion policy?
The statistics show it perfectly. The average GDP per capita of the countries that joined since 2004 was half of the European average. Now it is 80%. Some countries have grown immensely. But, as I said, it is not only a question of money, but also a question of method.
There are dangers as well. For certain countries, one of the problems is that this incredible growth is very imbalanced internally. If you concentrate too much your interventions on one city or territory, it could become a fragility.
Another aspect that requires a lot of attention is the role to be played by alternative centres, outside big cities. Because they are the ones that can really offer the quality of life that you require in order to retain young people, qualified people.
The 9th Cohesion Report shows where the brain drain is most evident (see EUROPE 13380/7).
In that sense, the message from Enrico Letta [in his report on the future of the internal market, editor’s note- see EUROPE 13394/1] is a very important one: we need to ensure the right to move, but also the right to stay. I think it’s a big objective and I'm very glad that the cohesion policy is helping to deliver it.
In 2025, the European Commission is going to present proposals on the next multiannual financial framework (MFF) after 2027. Is there a risk that the cohesion policy will be the big loser of the reform?
I hope not. The cohesion policy is the glue that keeps Europe together.
So, if you have a single market that has more demanding requirements in terms of greening or digitalisation, and if at the same time we are preparing an enlargement of the EU, you have got to make sure that we don’t do things at the expense of another.
Until now, we have been successful in reinforcing cohesion policy during each enlargement. But before an enlargement there is always this feeling of a risk. Enrico Letta insisted on the fact that the internal market and cohesion policy are the two sides of the same coin. Of course, we can improve the quality of the projects and the governance of the policy, and we are prepared for that.
We have to remember that the social and economic convergence stopped in 2008, and that the weakest regions could not catch up after the financial crisis. But if you look at statistics, in 2022, rich and poor regions were on average back where they were before the start of the Covid-19 pandemic thanks to a different European response. After 2008, for certain countries, the only element that kept their economies alive was cohesion policy.
During the pandemic, some cohesion financing was redistributed for emergency purposes, whereas it had already been allocated to projects or programmes...
But it was not forced, it was voluntary! The countries, if they wished, could transfer money to buy vaccines, masks, ventilators, to support small and medium businesses, to buy computers for the schools.
Altogether, €23 billion were reprogrammed by Member States at their own decision. And this was essential to mitigate the economic and social risks from the crisis. With Next Generation EU, there was another reinforcement of the programmes with €50 billion from REACT-EU (see EUROPE 12604/2).
The so-called ‘frugal’ countries would like to make cuts in the Cohesion Policy, whereas eleven ‘friends of cohesion’ countries have just adopted a declaration in favour of a robust cohesion policy (see EUROPE 13409/14). Is this the beginning of mobilisation?
Those 11 countries did a very good analysis of the 9th Cohesion Report. I was impressed by the quality of the discussion. But I think it is not just the ‘Visegrád+’ countries. A lot of other countries will be engaging in this direction.
It’s a bit strange that, on the one hand, countries benefit from the internal market and the free movement of goods, of capital and people and, on the other hand, they engage such a big discussion regarding their contribution to 1% of this wealth.
The purpose of a budget is to redistribute. If you don’t redistribute, there is no point in having a budget!
Is there a risk of renationalisation of cohesion policy as some countries like Italy are asking?
Countries that are more decentralised usually perform better. Look at Germany. We also see progress in Romania, which has recently created regional administrations.
So it is essential that countries respect the regional nature of this policy adapting it to the different characteristics of the different areas. Otherwise, you risk not getting the performance or the results that you could.
How could European cohesion policy be adapted in the future?
It will be for the next Commission to decide. It’s very important that this question is addressed during the European elections’ campaign, by future MEPs, national leaders and future European Commissioners.
Cohesion policy has been going through changes all the time, but it was always reinforced. We need to simplify the policy and also to be flexible enough to adapt to new challenges and opportunities. As I said, this requires a lot of quality of analysis and quality of projects, not only money. That’s why we are mobilising support to public administration in the Member states from the Technical Support Instrument (see EUROPE 13379/14).
Can the methodology for the management of the ‘Recovery and Resilience Facility’ funds (see EUROPE 13356/17) be transposed to cohesion policy?
Part of the methodology can be transposed. It is indeed possible to associate reforms and have some performance-based approach to deliver cohesion policy. But it is crucial to keep its spacial, place-based nature.
Milestones for the national recovery plans are usually reforms or legislation passed and defined at the national level. But in cohesion policy, we have programmes that are decentralised, managed by the regions, and for those it is essential to define reforms and targets at the adequate level.
How can the Directorate-General for Structural Reform Support (‘DG REFORM’) of the Commission help to deliver the performance-based policy?
We talk a lot about money but more important is to know what you are going to do with the money. And this leads us to the concept of the quality of the choices.
We are always producing new legislation. We are asking public administrations to adapt to new requirements such as digitalisation, greening of policies, often without proper training. In a lot of cases, the constraints on public finances didn’t allow for the hiring, nor the training of the civil servants. That is why we created, for example, a sort of an Erasmus programme specifically for civil servants which became immediately very popular.
‘DG REFORM’ is really a success story because it is giving support to reforms in all Member states on their request and on a voluntary basis. When I visit countries, everybody talks about the quality of support they got.
In the Netherlands, we supported the supervisors of the banking sector on using artificial intelligence to spot problems like money laundering. In Cyprus, the Supreme Court thanked us for the support in the reform of the justice system. The Greek minister was absolutely enthusiastic on introducing new methodologies in the hiring of civil servants and evaluation of their work.