EU - WHAT IS THE EUROPEAN REGIONAL FUND ? AND WHAT DOES IT SUPPORT ?

NOVEMBER 15:

What is the European Regional Fund?  What has it done?

Following the first enlargement of the EU in 1973 ( with the United Kingdom, Ireland and Denmark ) it was soon decided to mobilise EU funds to stimulate the development of less developed regions in the EU.  This was part of the policy of solidarity between all parts of the EU, which is an essential value in Europe.  And it was also done with the knowledge that if you accelerate the economic development in areas left behind it will have a clear positive effect for everybody in the EU.  Most member states had already national programmes to stimulate development in less developed regions.  But in 1975 the EU started the European Development and Regional Fund, often just called the EU Regional Fund.  Its first political boss was the British commissioner George Thomson from Scotland.

The principle for the Fund was and still is that it particularly supports investments in certain priority sectors. A condition for EU support is that a member state also gives support to the project.  The main decisions on who gets which support is taken by the European Commission on behalf of the EU. The daily management is for practical reasons done by national or regional authorities in the member states.

As the EU had more member states ( 1981: Greece; 1986: Spain and Portugal; 1995: Finland, Sweden and Austria; and 2014: ten countries from East and Southern Europe ) it was needed to allocate more resources also to the Regional Fund.

Today’s priority sectors for the Fund are:  innovation and research; digital projects; small and medium-sized companies; and projects reducing the emission of CO2.

The total budget for the Regional Fund is for the years 2014-20:  280,7 billion €.  Together with the other and smaller EU funds about 25 % of the total EU budget is allocated to these development purposes.

If you want to see how the Regional Fund is using its money on the different priority sectors and member state by member state you have the information on this site:

http://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/en/funding/ 

It is Poland, which as a country gets the biggest amount from the Regional Fund.  If you look at regions in need for support, 7 out of the 8 most qualified regions are in the United Kingdom.

The negotiations on a new multiannual budget for the years 2021-27 have almost finished ( Nov. 2020 ). The Commission has proposed, that the Funds in the future must be more flexible and more easy to manage.  At the same time it suggests a small reduction of the budget allocated to the funds ( about 5 % ).  A very important discussion takes place on the question :  if member states do not fulfill the key conditions for being a member of the EU ( such as respect for the fundamental European values spelled out in the Treaties ), should they then continue to get the same support from EU’s funds ?   Or as the former Belgian prime minister and present member of the European Parliament, Guy Verhofstadt, says to Hungary and Poland :  You want our money, but not our values !  The German EU presidency and the European Parliament just agreed that countries in the future will only get EU funds as usual, if they respect all the EU rules and principles, they have signed when becoming members.  Poland and Hungary are still against this new agreement – surprise surprise ☹     It will be very interesting to see the final outcome. Personally, I believe that all member states at the end will have to follow the rules.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

SHIP ELEVATORS IN BELGIUM

I have earlier written about Belgian culture. Today I want to tell you about Belgium’s INDUSTRIAL CULTURE.   In the beginning of the 19 th century the southern part of Belgium, Wallonia, was the most industrialised part of Europe – apart from England. It was based upon coal mines, iron and steelworks and a big network of internal waterways for transport.   East of Mons you can f.ex. see a former huge industrial complex, which today is an art museum.   The owners in 1810 built a lot of houses for their workers around the factory.   These houses are still there. The place is called GRAND HORNU. A very special side of the Walloon industrial culture was and are the so-called SHIP ELEVATORS.   They are huge elevators, which can lift ships up and down from different heights of the canals in the area. The first one in Houdeng-Goegnies was build in 1888. It can lift ships 15 meters up and down. Three more were added in 1917. Each of them can lift 17 meters. These old elevators are
Read more

AMERICA IS COMING BACK TO THE WORLD !

Image
NOVEMBER 24: This is the day! The day when president Trump finally three weeks after the American elections de facto accepts that Joe Biden has won the elections.   And won by a big margin.   So, now US is coming back to the world.   The nominations president-elect Biden is doing shows that he is choosing experienced and professional people, who know what they will be responsible for.   This is also great news for Europe.    The European-American relations will now come back on the track – as real allies, not as sort of adversaries, as Trump preferred to see them.   EU president Charles Michel yesterday congratulated Biden with his victory and invited him to a summit meeting with EU in Brussels next year, after he has taken over in January. The EU with its 448 mio. inhabitants and the US with 328 mio. have a lot in common.   Their mutual trade is huge. In 2019 it was 720 billion dollars – which is about one third of all international trade. We will certainly see much more bilater
Read more

MY FIRST SCHOOL DAY - April 2, 1952

Image
MY VERY FIRST SCHOOL DAY -  April 2, 1952: Today ( April 2, 2021 )   it is exactly 69 – sixtynine – years ago, since I started going to school. This is a long time ago. It was in 1952. But I still remember it, as if it were yesterday. Can you understand that ? It was a wonderful, sunny morning.   I had for such a long time been looking forward to going to school.   Ok, I could already read and I could also write reasonably.   But I wanted to learn much more. And quickly! I knew that we were 4 kids in our village, who should start that day. Two girls and two boys. I knew the other three well. Remember, we lived in a small country village, where everybody knew everybody. The first school day was always sort of a party to us.   Our parents came along to the school on that first day. And we all had put our nicest clothes on, of course. Our farm was about 1 ½ km from the school.   We walked there, my parents and I.   On the way I could see that the three others were in front of
Read more