Brussels, 10/07/2000 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday the European Commission will announce, on the eve of its weekly meeting, several important decision for regional policy.
First it will approve a high awaited list of Italian areas eligible for Objective 2 (regiona with industrial decline). While, for all the other countries, the stage reached is prepartatory or the adoption of programmes, the Italian map is very late. A compromise on the inclusion of a part of the region of Turin in this list, requested for many weeks by the Italian authorities, has been approved two weeks ago (see EUROEP of 30 June, p.13), finally enabling to Commission to adopt a map accepted by all the Member States.
Furthermore, the Commission will adopt a Communication on the "innovative actions. These action represent 0.4% of the annual ERDF grant, or around EUR 400 million over the period. They are aimed at establishing pilot projects allowing to test "innovative" practices to improve European regional aid interventions. The Commission will reduce the eligible themes from eight to three, to retain: i) regional economy based on innovative technology, ii) eEurope, iii) regional identity and sustainable development. It will also change the selection method for projects: from now on they will be selected and submitted to the Commission by the regions themselves, rather than passing through a system of calls for tenders centralised in Brussels. The Commission says it hopes that the concentration of its innovative action into a few fields will enable it to reinforce their primary objective, which is to test methods aimed at being then used to be put into practice for all the Funds.
Finally, buy adopting two implementing regulations, the Commission intends to specify the rules for the management and control of the Structural Funds. Notably specified and reinforced will be the Commission's right to decide, as a last resort, to remove all or part of the Community participation to certain programmes, in case of irregularities that the State in question does not correct.