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Europe Daily Bulletin No. 8132
Contents Publication in full By article 29 / 48
GENERAL NEWS / (eu) eu/regional policy

58 million euro for Belgian provinces of Namur and Luxembourg

Brussels, 18/01/2002 (Agence Europe) - Friday, the European Commission adopted a Single Programming Document (SPD) in favour of the Belgian provinces of Namur and Luxembourg for the period 2000-2006. In all, 206 million euro will be allocated to the programme, 87 million euro of which from the public authorities of the Member State, 61 million euro from the private sector and 58.4 million euro from the Community budget. This SPD, which comes under Objective 2 of the Structural Funds (regions undergoing economic and social re-conversion), concerns the rural areas of Wallonia and covers the districts of Dinant and Philippeville which total 97,600 and 60,000 inhabitants, respectively, as well as three districts of the province of Luxembourg that will benefit from Community support on a sliding scale. This new programme should allow for the creation of 1000 jobs and take per capita gross domestic produce of the Province of Namur to 90% of the Community average in 1997 to 98% in 2010.

The strategy adopted will be based on three priority actions:

  • Diversification of the economic base: physical capital investment projects to develop the area's productive base of both industry and merchant services, especially through services linked to management, NICTs (new information and communication technologies), electronic commerce and economic networking (Community contribution under the European Regional development Fund, or Erdf, of 20.165 million euro).
  • Structuring the rural area: the aim is to encourage tourism. Maintain commercial and services activities and strengthen the cohesion and attractiveness of the area by a better quality of structures to access to knowledge (Erdf contribution of 32.213 million euro).
  • Strengthening of job-creation: so as to satisfy the specific needs in human resources (5.206 million euro from the European social Fund, or Esf).

In addition, a Community allocation of 793,734 euro (Erdf and Esf) will be allocated to technical assistance measures.

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