Brussels, 20/07/2007 (Agence Europe) - On Friday 20 July, the European Commission reached an agreement with the Swedish authorities on their National Strategic Reference Framework (NSRF) and on Sweden's priorities for cohesion policy for the period 2007-2013. In its NSRF, Sweden describes how it plans to invest European funds, i.e. €1.9 billion to be allocated to it over 7 years, in compliance with the Lisbon strategy on growth and employment. From these European funds, €1.6 billion will go to improving growth and employment within the regional competitiveness and employment objective, and €265 million will go to the European territorial objective. The national contribution, which will complete European financing, is estimated at €1.9 billion, which brings total aid to €3.8 billon over 7 years (including territorial cooperation).
The priorities for 2007-2013 are: (1) developing attractive new products to create a culture of entrepreneurship and to improve access to financing; (2) equipping over a million people of working age in Sweden, either outside the labour market or working less than they would like to, with better skills to help them find jobs; (3) expanding Sweden's national road and railway networks to improve accessibility in this peripheral country; and (4) linking the northernmost parts of Sweden, Norway and Finland to boost growth in a harsh climate, and giving support to the indigenous Sami people in the three countries who traditionally live through the reindeer industry.
These priorities will be translated into 8 regional operational programmes that will receive funding from the ERDF (60% of which will go to research and innovation) and the ESF (50% of which will go to active and preventive measures on the labour market).
Information: http: //http://www.ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/atlas2007/fiche/se_en.pdf (gb)