Brussels, 09/02/2000 (Agence Europe) - On Wednesday, the European Commission adopted the programming documents (DOCUP) for Structural Fund financing in Finland under Objective 1 of regional policy. These are the first two programmes for setting in place EU regional aid for the period 2000-2006. These two programming documents, which concern the northern and eastern regions of Finland, define the priority lines of the European regional policy in the two regions. They determine the kinds of projects that will receive support. These priority fields are: enterprise activity, rural development and the development of technologies and knowledge. The first projects chosen from the Docup guidelines should be launched from the second half of this year, states the Commission.
Programmes will be financed by the different Structural funds: the European Regional Development Fund (50%), the European Social Fund (a little less than 30%), the European Agricultural Guarantee Fund (20%), and the Financial Instrument for Fisheries Guidance (1%). In absolute figures, funding will amount to EUR 948 million, two thirds of which will be for eastern Finland and one third for northern Finland, for the period 2000-2006.