Brussels, 22/03/2007 (Agence Europe) - The EP's regional development committee has adopted the draft report of Markus Pieper (EPP-ED, Germany) and some compromise amendments on “the repercussions of future enlargements on cohesion policy efficiency”, by a large majority (35 votes for, 3 against, with 3 abstentions). The committee hopes that this will provide an essential new orientation to EU structural policies. It is requesting: the Commission to propose “a graduated model for cohesion policy” that will allow for greater differentiation between pre-accession assistance and full membership of European cohesion policy; a graduated approach to Turkey that concentrates more closely on the funding of specific themes (activity sectors, administrative organisation, gender equality) and regions, so as to avoid an unthinking adoption of the usual accession-relative financial measures to achieve more targeted cohesion and growth effects; that the EU, in the context of the debate on future cohesion policy, makes greater use of the leverage effect on loan financing, particularly in regions that have been receiving European funds for several years in an effort to improve Community aid efficiency; the Commission and Council to consider linking the award of funds under the future cohesion policy to a healthy national growth policy.
During the presentation of his report to the parliamentary committee, Mr Pieper indicated that this report analyses the way in which future EU enlargements will impact on the efficiency of cohesion policy and the form that this policy ought to take in the future to best reach the objectives on balance and growth. This report covers Romania and Bulgaria (although these accessions have just happened), Turkey and Croatia (that have official candidate status and with whom the EU began accession negotiations), as well as the Western Balkans (Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro and Serbia including Kosovo), which are considered potential candidates. Ukraine and Russia are not covered by the report, since they only have a very long-term prospect of being potential accession candidates. As the budgets committee pointed out in its opinion on the Pieper report, faced with future enlargements, the EU has to tackle three major cohesion policy challenges: worsening development disparities, the shift in the centre of cohesion policy's gravity to the East, and the inequalities that continue in the EU15. Mr Pieper explained that “if candidate and potential candidate countries should join all at once, more than 1/3 of the eligible regions would lose their Objective 1 status (convergence, growth and employment). Only regions of the Baltic states and Slovakia would remain eligible”. He also pointed out that the countries most affected would be Italy, Germany, Malta, Spain, Greece and France. Greece, Cyprus and Slovenia would be excluded from the Cohesion Fund (90%) and the Czech Republic would not fall far short of the 90% threshold. In a reference to certain estimates, Markus Pieper noted that in order to proceed with Structural Fund investment, considered necessary in the current perspective, a budget of €150.2bn would be needed for candidate and potential candidate countries. Pieper said that the effectiveness of regional policy can be preserved or even strengthened, by way of loan leverage financing, even if the financial margin for manoeuvre is quite slim, and he stated that simplification of co-financing modalities by the private sector to European programmes could increase the degree of European support efficiency. (gb)