Apr 18, 2024

EPP Group in European Parliament expects lively debates on future of Cohesion Policy

Brussels, 17/04/2024 (Agence Europe) The EPP group in the European Parliament insisted, on Wednesday 17 April, on the importance of maintaining a strong Cohesion Policy in the future, while stressing the need to improve certain aspects of it.   Jan Olbrycht (EPP, Polish), co-rapporteur on the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF), summed up for a few journalists the “dilemma” that remains unresolved: the least developed countries of the EU believe that cohesion policy is for the poorest countries, while the others believe that it is an investment policy for all countries. “This policy must not be seen as a budgetary reserve for other policies” warned Mr Olbrycht.   In the forthcoming debate in 2025 on the next post-2027 MFF, he pointed out that this policy is implemented using national envelopes, so all the Member States are “fighting to keep their envelope’. When the MFF was revised, only the share of funds in the hands of the European Commission was reduced.   The debate on the future will focus on the type of cohesion policy desired, the proportion of the budget devoted to national envelopes and the distribution criteria (GDP, economic situation, etc.). The GDP criterion is always the one that is retained at the end of negotiations, Jan Olbrycht pointed out.   The loans from the EU’s Economic Recovery Plan will have to be repaid, and Mr Olbrycht sees three ways of finding the money: increasing Member States’ contributions, increasing the budget’s own resources or reducing policy funds (agriculture, cohesion, research). The added value of cohesion policy will have to be demonstrated. “The system will have to be modified " when Ukraine joins the EU, but the specific features of this policy (national envelopes, shared management) must remain, according to Mr Olbrycht (see EUROPE 13371/14).   Siegfried Mureșan, Vice-Chair of the EPP group, stated that cohesion policy “must continue to exist after 2027”. He warned against the consequences of creating new instruments, particularly in terms of delays in the distribution of funds. “We need to use existing tools and adapt them”, he said.   For Andrey Novakov (EPP, Bulgarian), Chair of the EPP’s ‘Cohesion Monitoring Group’, the criteria for distributing funds under this policy “must be changed so that the funds are open to all Member States and all regions of the EU, which would put an end to the discussion on net beneficiaries and net contributors”. Another of Mr Novakov’s priorities is to obtain feedback from mayors on the changes to be made. “The Commission’s planned legislation is often disconnected from the real needs of municipalities”, he stressed.   Pascal Arimont (EPP, Belgian) said that the money spent by the Member States on the co-financed part of cohesion policy funds could be treated as “neutral” in national budgets. He expects a debate on this issue during the next European Parliament mandate. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)