Brussels, 15/09/2000 (Agence Europe) - Spatial planning should be embodied in a real European policy, but this issue will not be resolved under French Council Presidency, which is sufficiently busy at the institutional level with the Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) on institutional reform, said Dominique Voynet, French Environment and Spatial Planning Minister, speaking to the European Parliament's Committee on Regional Policy, on Tuesday morning. "I feel sure that we should set a European spatial planning policy in place, of which regional policy would be a part, and which would no longer, as it does now, simply comprise informal meetings without legal base … but this question will be settled later, as one should not weigh down the IGC with it", said the Council President. Dominique Voynet stressed the "paradox" of spatial planning policy that "remains vague, in procedure and in competence", although the Structural Funds account for a substantial part of the Community budget.
Georg Jarzembowski (EPP, Germany), however, doubts there is a need to "do in higher spheres what should come under local government". Dominique Voynet, like the chairman of the parliamentary committee, Konstantinos Hatzidakis (EPP, GR) and Gilles Savary (PES, F), believes "it is not of course a matter of saying how a town must be built but of cooperation at a different level, for the very large infrastructures, with trans-European networks in particular".
Addressed by Alain Esclopé (EDD, F) on the "blackmail exercised by the Commission between implementation of Natura 2000 (European network of protected areas of natural habitat) and financing from Structural Funds", Dominique Voynet said she was "not far from sharing this analysis. Being part of Natura 2000 is not a punishment and should not be the subject of blackmail in order to benefit from Structural Funds, … we shall try to be more specific". The Commission decided in March that, before adopting a Structural Funds 2000-2006 planning document for a Member State, it expected that the Member State in question would undertake to present its list of Natura 2000 sites. If the States do not honour their commitment, the payments of projects under way could be suspended. Once the list is presented, if a project turns out to be in contradiction with the Natura 2000 network, the Commission could suspend payments, call for reimbursement of funding, or even initiate infringement proceedings (see EUROPE of 17 March, p.4).
The French minister also criticised the "archaic nature" of the tools used for assessing the effectiveness of Structural Funds. "It is possible to know what the utilisation percentage of funds is if they are controlled financially and physically, but as far as the economic and social aspects generated by these projects are concerned, we are far from being able to keep count", she declared.