Irish Regions Office Website

January 22, 2009

Ring-fencing of unspent regional funds?

A 20 January Opinion on the mid-term review of the 2007-2013 financial framework from the European Parliament’s Committee on Regional Development (REGI) calls for Structural Fund resources decommitted under the 'N+2' rule (i.e. if no payment claim is made within two years following the year during which the aid was granted) to be reallocated within the cohesion budget. This underlines a Parliament position during the negotiations on the Structural Funds 2007-2013. The possibility of rewarding regions with high-performing programme implementation and efficient-spending profiles is among the options being tabbed to the Commission for consideration.

Other proposals from the REGI Opinion include:
- A higher proportion (than the 2013 figure of 0.35%) of EU GDP to finance Cohesion Policy in light of the new challenges ahead (climate change, adaptation to globalisation, demographic change…);
- that the future Cohesion Policy continue to cover all European regions, with the greater part of its resources concentrated on the least developed;
- a clearly defined transitional system for regions whose GDP will exceed 75% of the EU average – and which would thus lose the status of ‘less developed regions’;
- to increase the next Structural Fund programming period to ten years, in line with ongoing EU-level discussions about instituting five-year (as opposed to seven at present) EU financial frameworks – thereby allowing a more complete mid-term review;
- higher funding for the territorial cooperation objective.

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getdoc.do?pubref=-//ep//nonsgml+comparl+pe-415.347+02+doc+pdf+v0//en&language=en

Posted by iroronan at January 22, 2009 10:58 AM