Brussels, 11/10/2001 (Agence Europe) - Commissioner Michel Barnier addressed the European Parliament's Regional Policy Committee on Tuesday to give an update of the adoption of Structural Fund programmes for 2000-2006 (good progress has been made in Objectives 1 and 2 but great delays in the other programmes), the use of the credits available this year (delays, naturally, in programmes which have not yet been adopted) and preparations for the debate on the future of the cohesion policy.
The programming of aid for 2000-2006 is progressing well, signalled the Commissioner. 112 out of the 114 Objective 1 programmes have been adopted and "most" of the Objective 2 programmes that have not yet been adopted will be adopted "before the end of the year". The "big priority" for the current six-month period is the adoption of programmes for Community initiatives: for URBAN, the Commission is doing what is required, in partnership with Member States, so that "all 70 programmes can be adopted by the end of 2001"; and for INTERREG, "most of the programmes will be adopted by the end of 2001". Since more projects than expected were sent in under the innovative action section, Michel Barnier announced that he would be requesting an increase in the budget for innovative actions this year by temporarily transferring credits from INTERREG that are available in 2001. The Commissioner warned MEPs about the worrying situation of the Cohesion Funds where despite a reminder letter sent to the states in question, there were "significant delays". A progress report by the General Directorate for Regional Policy signalled that there are enough projects for Spain and Ireland, but efforts would have to be made to avoid an avalanche of projects at the end of the year. The situation of Portugal and Greece is "quite preoccupying", with insufficient projects. For the ISPA projects for candidate countries, "payments are starting" but implementation in the field is beginning "slowly" because the projects are huge, involve several departments in the candidate countries and because a lot of controls are required given "the weakness of control mechanisms in candidate countries. The Commissioner noted that the decentralisation that had been planned for 2001 would have to be put off since the candidate countries were not ready to implement it yet.
Mr Barnier stressed the need to find ways of "simplifying" programming. At the Namur Regional Policy Council in July, the EU accused the Commission of being very procedure-oriented for the adoption of additional programmes, canceling out the benefit of simplifying the procedures for getting the basic Programming Documents adopted. The Commission has hence decided to be strict on the coherence of finance, but not to block adoption for other reasons which can be sorted out later by monitoring committees.
The use of credits available in 2001 is subject to some delay. As at 30 September, 88.2% of the EUR 26.63 billion of commitment appropriations (CA) and 49.8% of the EUR 19.17 billion of payment appropriations (PA) scheduled for 2001 had been used. For programmes for 2000-2006, the use of the available CA and PA breaks down as follows: Objective 1 (99.5% of CA and 39.1% of PA); Objective 2 (96.5% of CA and 56.9% of PA); INTERREG (19.3% of CA and 0.5% of PA); URBAN (8.5% of CA and 0% of PA); Technical Assistance (14.1% of CA and 13.1% of PA); Cohesion Funds (51.2% of CA and 40.6% of PA); International Fund for Ireland (100% of CA and 58% of PA); and ISPA (52.2% of CA and 46% of PA). The liquidation of projects for the 1994-1999 period is continuing. The Commission has already made 89.7% of payments for Objectives 1 and 6 scheduled for this year, 79.6% for Objectives 2 and 5 and 94.5% for Community initiatives. As at 30 June 2001, interventions totalling EUR 400 million from before 1994 remained open. Mr Barnier explained that the Commission would only accept requests to defer payments for projects from 1994-1999 (for which the deadline of 31 December 2001 had been set) on an exceptional basis in accordance with the rule that payments requests have to be transmitted in the two years following the commitment of the credits. Several MEPs, including Georg Jarzembowski (EPP, Germany), supported this position, stressing being strict was the only way to ensure credits were used in a reasonable timespan.
Debate on the future of regional policy is continuing. Mr Barnier signalled that the first progress report on cohesion would be published at the end of January. It will update the figures in the Cohesion Report 12 months earlier (unemployment, GDP by inhabitant and region, etc) and give the results of the first studies commissioned by the Commission (into islands and mountainous regions) and the macro-economic impact of Structural Funds (difference compared with GDP, benefit for countries that are not the direct beneficiaries through their companies, etc). The Commission will launch further studies and a series of seminars in order to discuss the ten questions posed by the Cohesion Report.