The Committee of the Regions (CoR) welcomed the favourable vote on the draft report on General Structural Funds Regulation from the Regional Committee at the European Parliament which reflects the CoR's position on cohesion policy. Mercedes Bresso, President of the CoR, reiterated the willingness of Europe's local and regional authorities to support the EP team involved in the negotiations with the European Council.

The President of the Committee of the Regions (CoR) welcomed the outcome of the vote by the Regional Committee at the European Parliament on the draft report on General Structural Funds Regulation last 12 of July. Mercedes Bresso stressed that MEPs responsible for the draft report on General Structural Funds Regulation, have succeeded in securing the general European interest and putting the European Parliament on a strong footing to launch the next phase of the legislative process.

According to Ms Bresso, the Regional and Development Committee in the EP favours greater flexibility in the thematic balance of the Structural Funds vis-à-vis the Europe 2020 Strategy like the CoR, leaving local and regional authorities with more room to manoeuvre so that they can genuinely adapt the operational programmes to their regions' needs. MEPs also recognised the role of local authorities in the implementation of cohesion policy since the partnership principle would be strengthened, mainly via a European code of conduct for developing partnership contracts at the level of each Member State.

In addition to this, the CoR also welcomes the creation of a category of "transition" regions, i.e. regions with a GDP of 75 to 90 per cent of the EU average. The CoR succeeded in convincing the MEPs that this category would help to support regions whose growth had stagnated in relative terms (i.e. regions at the "lower end" of the most "competitive" category of regions) without penalising regions which had just been phased out of the "convergence" objective but had experienced an unconsolidated growth spurt.