There are still several months left for its official presentation but the project with which to materialize the vision of the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, for “a simpler, more effective and more impactful budget” is already very advanced to judge. for a recent internal presentation held at the institution. The first ideas that have begun to circulate point to a radical restructuring of the accounts and have set off alarm bells in European regions, which are suspicious of this centralizing approach and fear for the future of cohesion policy.
In the future, the “cash in exchange for reforms” model, launched through the Next Generation EU funds as an emergency formula during the pandemic to reactivate the economy, would become the norm, according to the information. disseminated by the General Directorate of Budgets of the community executive to other services of the institution in a meeting held in September, published by Politico this weekend and to which you have had access The Vanguard .
A total of 530 current community programmes, from the Cohesion Fund to the European Social Fund, the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and direct payments to farmers, among others, would be integrated into 27 single national programmes, a plan to each country. with a sum of money whose amount has yet to be determined but to which central governments could access in exchange for carrying out economic reforms and meeting objectives previously agreed with Brussels.
The money would go directly to the national budgets, without directly involving the regions or cities in its use, as is currently the case with the structural and cohesion funds, which are also paid after the projects are carried out, not before. An example that appears in the presentation consists of making aid for the construction of railway lines conditional on reforms in the field of public procurement. The priorities would be reviewed each year, which in theory would allow the use of the budget to be adapted to the events that occur during the period 2028-2034.
With these changes, the budget structure would be, as Von der Leyen proposes, simpler and more flexible, but at the cost of diluting policies historically considered key by countries like Spain – one of the so-called ‘friends of cohesion’ – in addition of leaving regions and cities out of the management of community funds. “The national plans are a Trojan horse for the European project,” criticize European sources, who believe that “the EU would be reduced to being a kind of bank” and recall that the treaties oblige the Commission to ensure economic cohesion. territorial and social.
Von der Leyen studies creating a new Competitiveness Fund nourished by money from cohesion and the CAP
“If the news we have read is true, we are facing two big problems. The first, the complete eradication of the role of local and regional authorities in the future of cohesion policy, which is unacceptable. And the second, that confidence in what we had been told” about the EC’s plans would be broken, the president of the EU Committee of Regions, Vasco Alves Cordeiro, warned yesterday in a speech alongside the European Commissioner for Cohesion and Reforms, Elisa Ferreira, who, diplomatically, advocated that this policy “not lose its DNA.”
“Cohesion policy is the glue that holds Europe together, and the bottom-up approach, the principle of partnership and the goal of driving development across Europe cannot be lost. Otherwise, fragmentation can create many political problems, even the future of Europe can be in danger,” warned Ferreira, who called on all those involved in the discussions to make their voices heard and recalled that the president of the Commission, current and future, has committed to preserving this policy and maintaining involvement with regions and cities, “the administrative level in which citizens trust the most.”
Cordeiro also criticized the idea that Brussels only ensures the correct use of taxpayers’ money while at the end of the chain, on the contrary, it is wasted. “Cohesion policy is not perfect but it works,” Cordeiro and Ferreira insisted in a passionate intervention.
The change in approach responds, in part, to the lack of European money fresco . Von der Leyen has already said that she is not considering proposing to the Twenty-seven to go to the markets to carry out another debt issue and thus inject more resources into the community coffers with which to finance new political bets, such as competitiveness and defense, as yes. Instead, it was made at the time with Next Generation funds. Nor does it seem that it will be possible to go beyond a budget equivalent to 1% of the GDP of the Twenty-seven, so that to create the announced Competitiveness Fund, today the EC is only considering redefining already existing programs.
The spokesperson for the European Commission, Eric Mamer, stressed yesterday that there is no formal proposal document, only “some reflections underway in the Directorate-General for Budgets based on the political guidelines defined by President Von der Leyen”, as well as as in the mission letter sent by Piotr Serafin, the Polish diplomat who has been appointed as the next Budget Commissioner. In that document, it is already detailed that one of its responsibilities will be to design a plan for each country in which European investments are linked to carrying out reforms.
Each country will have a single aid fund that it can access in exchange for economic reforms
This detail also gives an idea, according to sources involved in the discussions, of how advanced Von der Leyen’s plans are, which have surprised by also touching on agricultural aid to further nationalize its management. Before the summer, representatives of more than 120 European regions – Catalonia and the large German länder among them – wrote to the EC to defend the contributions of cohesion policy and claim their role in its development. Detractors of the approach proposed internally by the Commission trust that the mobilization of public opinion and affected actors will derail the initiative before it takes shape in the talks between Von der Leyen and the leaders of the Twenty-Seven.
Source: www.lavanguardia.com
