European Union News - Regional Policy

A Communication adopted by the European Commission highlights the positive benefits of environment law, showing how preventing damage to the environment can cost far less than long-term remediation. The main objective of this Communication is to help to intensify the dialogue with governments and all other stakeholders on how can work better together to achieve better implementation of EU law.

COTER, the Committee of the Regions Commission for Territorial Cohesion Policy, adopted four opinions on the structural funds regulations which aims to add flexibility, simplification, full involvement of regions and cities at shaping and implementing operational programmes and partnership contracts. The opinions will be voted by the CoR at the next CoR plenary session on 3-4 May.

Mercedes Bresso, President of the Committee of Regions calls for a major involvement of the regions on the elaboration of the National Reform Plans. In addition, the President also stressed the CoR intention of using more intensively its EU 2020 Monitoring platform.

The ninth meeting of the dialogue foreseen in UN General Assembly Resolution 64/298, with the facilitation of the EU, between Dr. Tahiri who led the Kosovo delegation and Mr. Stefanovic who led the Serbian delegation, ended with an agreement on Regional Cooperation and with the adoption of a technical protocol on the implementation of the IBM deal.

At the 12th session of the Global Ministerial Environment Forum held in Nairobi (Kenya), Mercedes Bresso, president of the Committee of the Regions, highlighted the need for local and regional authorities to be more involved in environmental and sustainable development policy-making and programme implementation at global level.

Mercedes Bresso, the President of the Committee of the Regions, asked to the European Commission for the possibility to implement integrated actions for a sustainable urban development. She also stressed the need of more flexibility, simplification and an 'Urban-Lab' in order to achieve such goal.

The European Commission published a new edition of the overview of the main funding opportunities available to European SMEs. The funding is available in different forms such as grants, loans and, in some cases, guarantees. The guide aims to present the European programmes available to SMEs and contains brief information as well as the main web sites for each programme.

The European Commission announced the proposal to suspend the 29% of the Hungary's cohesion fund allocations for 2013 for not addressing excessive deficit. Hungary had not taken effective action to bring its deficit to below the target of 3% of GDP by 2011 in a sustainable and credible manner. According to the Commission, this is unprecedented step which follows the repeated warnings to Hungary urging it to step up its efforts to end the country's excessive government deficit.