The European Ministers responsible for Cohesion Policy discussed the lessons to be learned from the mid-term review of cohesion policy for the period 2021-2027 on Thursday 26 February (see EUROPE 13808/11). They advocate administrative simplification and flexibility.
“We had a very constructive and fruitful meeting”, enthused Makis Keravnos, the Cypriot Finance Minister, at the press conference following the meeting. He explained that his counterparts had focused on how incentives and flexibilities could be designed into the next Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF), in order to align cohesion policy more closely with the EU’s strategic priorities, notably by strengthening competitiveness and prosperity for all Europeans. “The aim is to achieve a balance between predictability and flexibility, so that investment can benefit all European citizens in all European territories”, he explained.
“It is cohesion that strengthens competitiveness and, together, cohesion and competitiveness are the engines of European growth”, said Jan Szyszko, Secretary of State at the Polish Ministry of Funds and Regional Policy.
The Ministers also discussed the importance of administrative capacity, simplification and equal access to opportunities in all regions. “Bureaucracy is an absolute problem”, said Norbert Totschnig, Austria’s Federal Minister for Agriculture, Forestry, the Regions and Water Management, ahead of the meeting.
For Raffaele Fitto, the Commission’s Executive Vice-President responsible for Cohesion and Reform, “the mid-term review has been a game changer in the method, in the political approach, in the strategic investments”.
The Polish Minister also revealed that the day before, seventeen European Union countries considered to be ‘friends of cohesion’ had met at the permanent representation of Romania. They discussed cohesion policy for the next period 2028-2034 and, according to him, “one position emerged very clearly”. “I believe that decentralisation is not an issue that divides Member States. (...) Our intention is to really enable a decentralised model for managing these funds from a new perspective”, he explained. Although he described himself as “a fervent advocate of maintaining and even strengthening this decentralised system for managing European funds”, he qualified his remarks: “Our intention is not to impose decentralisation on all Member States. In fact, small countries such as Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have more centralised models”, he acknowledged. The previous day, MEPs had defended the same point of view (see EUROPE 13816/9).
Prior to the exchange of views, the Ministers approved the conclusions on the EU agenda for cities (see EUROPE 13811/2).
In addition, the Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian Ministers drew attention to the importance of the EU’s eastern border regions and the specific challenges they face, in response to the Commission’s recent communication on this subject (see EUROPE 13816/10). (Original version in French by Anne Damiani)