CoR sees reprogramming and freezing of Structural Funds as incompatible with new EU growth strategy
The communication on budgetary flexibility adopted by the European Commission in January only validates one of the Juncker plan's priorities: investing for growth. The European Committee of the Regions (CoR) feels it is contradictory to promote a phase of growth and calls for more flexibility in investment while at the same time freezing and reprogramming the European Structural Funds in Member States that fail to comply with the EU's economic governance rules.
In his opinion on the Guidelines on the application of the measures linking the effectiveness of the European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF) to sound economic governance , adopted at the CoR's plenary session yesterday, Bernard Soulage (FR/PES), vice-president of the Rhône-Alpes Regional Council, pointed to the direct implications of this contradiction, namely that the ESIF - representing the biggest source of EU investment funding - will become much less reliable and effective.
"The European Commission's ambivalence towards this document is apparent. It is a set of technocratic provisions that clearly cannot be implemented in practice. I am thinking in particular about the renegotiation of the programmes and the supposed effectiveness of this, not to mention all the red tape that would be involved", commented Mr Soulage. This is not the first time that the Committee has criticised the application of the macroeconomic conditionality principle, which it took a firm stand against last year.
Mr Soulage pointed to the risks associated with applying conditionality, including that of overburdening local authorities given the complexity and cost of reprogramming the Structural Funds. The Committee also noted that the democratic control of the European Parliament over these procedures would now be much weaker than expected. It therefore urged the Commission to put the European Parliament back at the centre of decision-making in implementing macroeconomic conditionality and asked that the CoR be consulted on the matter.
The CoR thus considers that cities and regions in the EU have, more than ever, legitimate reasons to be concerned about the application of this principle which would penalise them unfairly, and points out that local authorities should not be held responsible for excessive national deficits. Mr Soulage made a point of drawing attention to one of the main advantages of the ESIF, namely that they allow long-term public investment to be carried out in the regions based on guaranteed and predictable EU co-financing. "A Damocles' sword constantly hanging above these future investments will make them unattractive. It will also undermine their leverage effect and compromise the role of local and regional authorities, which are after all the main sources of public investment in the European Union," the rapporteur concluded.
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