Brussels, 21/01/2002 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission is going to give Member States more time to complete a number of programmes funded by the Structural Funds from the 1994-1999 period, but the Commissioner for Regional Policy told journalists that money (but not gigantic sums) had been lost in many countries. The Commission is in the process of closing the programmes since all the payments should have been made by 31 December 2001 but "pragmatically", the Commission is in the process of reassessing the requests for a few months grace; The Structural Funds regulation allows an extra year to be granted in certain cases. There have always been considerable delays and huge sums waiting to be allocated in the Structural Funds, which the European Parliament has been particularly critical of.
In the present programming period, the limits for using the funds will fall at the end of each year. The Commissioner for regional policy wrote to EU Member State prime ministers at the end of last year to remind them that they had to implement their Structural Funds programmes in 2000-2006 rapidly since the new Structural Funds rules stipulate that funding committed for regional projects each year has to be used within two years of the date of commitment. If no payment requests are sent by the country in question to the Commission in this time, the money will not be paid out. The first deadline falls at the end of this year, since the first programmes were launched in 2000. Commissioner Barnier said the rule was terrible but it was a good management rule, so he wanted to carry out a preventative measure by reminding countries of the deadline. The first assessment will be carried out in 2003 (to see whether it is necessary to relax the n+2 rule), he stressed, adding that at the moment, there was a risk everywhere.