European Union News - Regional Policy

Ministers at the General Affairs Council reached an agreement on the Council's position on the EU 2013 EU draft budget. However, the Dutch, Swedish and UK delegations voted against and the Austrian delegation abstained. The decision limits the increase in payments to 2.79% compared to 2012.

The 10th edition of the OPEN DAYS 2012 (8 – 11 October 2012) will be a time for positive reflection during the overall discussions on the future European cohesion policy, according to the Committee of the Regions. The preliminary programme for this event is now available as well as the registration at the event website.

The Committee of the Regions (CoR) held a debate with the President of the European Investment Bank (EIB), Werner Hoyer in order to boost the partnership between these two institutions. Both institutions stressed that the cooperation with local and regional authorities should start at an early stage before the programming period 2014-2020 in order to grant the needed continuity in the programmes implementation and to raise the quality of funded projects.

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.

Following several votes, Regional Development Committee are set to start talks with Member States on the EU's post-2013 cohesion policy. Among the conclusions reached by MEPs ahead the negotiations with the Council, they stressed that regional policy funding should not depend on Member States' budget discipline.

MEPs at the Employment and Social Affairs Committee rejected the idea of making the allocation of funds to social projects conditional upon the respect for budget discipline required by the EU stability and growth pact. For them, the European Social Fund (ESF) should account for at least 25% of EU cohesion policy funding in 2014-2020.

According to Eurostat, the unemployment rates varied widely across the EU regions in 2011. Thus, the highest rates were registered in the regions of Andalucía (30.4%) and Canarias (29.7%) in Spain while the lowest rates were recorded in the regions of Tirol and Salzburg (both 2.5%) in Austria and Zeeland (2.7%) in the Netherlands. In addition, seventeen regions had a rate of 19.2% or higher, double that of the EU: ten regions in Spain, four French Overseas Departments and three regions in Greece.

Since 1 of July, the Council Presidency of the EU will be carried out by Cyprus. The Cyprus Presidency, their first since joining the European Union in 2004, follows the Danish Presidency. The main objective of the Cyprus Presidency is to work 'Towards a Better Europe', one that is more relevant to its citizens and closer to its neighbours. Recently, Cyprus requested financial aid to the Eurogroup.

The Committee of the Regions' (CoR) CIVEX commission organised a seminar on "Local democracy and good governance" whose main conclusions were that local and regional authorities have an active role in ensuring transparency in the public sector and tackling corruption, thus achieving good governance and sound administration for their citizens.