Bureaucratie weghalen om het maximale uit EU-fondsen voor regio's te halen (en) - Hoofdinhoud

EU and national procedures must be simplified to enable the poorer regions in particular to access and invest higher rates of EU funding for regional development and building competitiveness, say MEPs in a resolution passed on Tuesday. Absolute priority should go to job-creating projects, they add.

In a debate on Monday in Strasbourg, rapporteur Michael Theurer (ALDE, DE) cited Poland and Estonia as the best examples of how to increase take-up rates within a few years. "But Romania and Bulgaria are lagging behind, and more surprisingly, also regions from founding countries such as Calabria and Sicily", he added.

In a resolution on "Absorption of Structural and Cohesion Funds: lessons learnt for the future cohesion policy", approved by a show of hands, MEPs urge the Commission to put more emphasis on payments for delivery of results and creating new jobs rather than chasing up irregularities of form, rather than substance.  Controls should focus on detecting real frauds, they say.

Introduce a single audit

Parliament urges that audit requirements should be proportional to the amount of funding provided. It recommends introducing a single, once-only audit to turn cohesion policy into a truly performance-oriented and cost-efficient tool.

Improve administrative capacity

MEPs suggest setting up an EU-wide co-operation programme, based on twinning regions with high and low take-up rates, to make it easier to share best practice. The resolution also stresses the need for multi-level governance and partnership in managing structural and cohesion funds.

Background

Several Member states face growing difficulties in absorbing EU regional development funds. At the start of 2011, take-up rates for the 2007-2013 programming period ranged from 11% to 44% among Member States.

Errors and delays due to the complexity of rules at EU and national levels have been aggravated by the effects of global economic recession and consequent shortage of national funding to co-finance projects.

Parliament's committees are currently discussing the possibility of temporarily raising the EU's share of co-financing rate to 95%, in order to boost take-up, and hence structural investment,  in the six countries hardest hit by the crisis, and notably Greece i.

Procedure: Non-legislative resolution