Brussels, 18/10/2001 (Agence Europe) - The Structural Fund Annual Report for the year 2000 puts the spotlight on delays in adopting programmes for 2000-2006, revealing that only 51.8% of the commitment appropriations (CA) and 55.8% of the payment appropriations (PA) could be used in 2000 due to programmes not having been adopted. This varies widely from one programme to the next. The credits used mainly cover three policies: Objective 3 (94.6% of CAs and 97.2% of PAs), FIFG (88.5% of CAs and 100% of PAs) and Objective 1 (56.8% of CAs and 53.7% of PAs). Very few credits were used, however, for Innovative Actions and Technical Assistance (13.9% of CAs and 25.5% for PAs), virtually none for Objective 2 (4.6% of CAs and 7.2% of PAs) and none (0%) for Community Initiatives.
This under-use of credits was already known about since the EUR 6.152 billion of unused commitment appropriations in 2000 were brought forward to 2002-2006 in May 2001 (see EUROPE of 3 May, p.8). The annual report gives details with the European Commission stressing that that the implementation level of the credits in the first year of the 2000-2006 regional package compared with the entire period is comparable with the situation in 1994, the first year of the 1994-1999 package. Programming has speeded up in 2001, although there are still delays (see EUROPE of 12 October, p.15). The Annual Report does not cover Cohesion Funds, which is a regional policy instrument that is not part of the Structural Funds. Below we give a summary of the different programmes:
Objective 1: The Commission believes that the situation is "particularly satisfying" for this programme (for the least developed regions). All the programming frameworks (7 Community Support Frameworks or CSF and 19 Single Programming Documents or SPDs) were adopted, with the exception of the French IT programme. Almost half the operational programmes completing the CSFs were approved (46 out of 97). The report notes that all Member States, with the exception of Greece, were able to implement their programmes from 2000 in a relatively "homogenous" manner in the different countries, but at a level sharply above average for Ireland (31% compared with the average of 9%) which was better prepared. The biggest disparities are in payments, with delays for Germany, France and Spain "in particular", for which three countries the programmes were only adopted right at the end of the year, too late to be able to obtain in 2000 the advance paid when a programme is adopted.
Objective 2: Only the SPDs for Finland, Sweden and Denmark for Objective 2 (for areas undergoing redevelopment) were adopted in 2000. The Swedish programme was adopted at the end of December, so it was only possible to launch projects in Finland and Denmark.
Objective 3: All the programming documents for this Objective (focusing on employment and human resources) were adopted in 2000, hence it was possible to begin launching the projects in the field.
Community INTERREG, URBAN, EQUAL and Leader+ initiatives: The Commission only adopted the guidelines of the adoption and implementation of these initiatives in 2000. It also began examining the projects sent in by Member States.
Innovative Actions: The guidelines were adopted in January 2001.