(23 March 2018) – There are no guarantees that EU Cohesion funds will not be cut in the next seven-year budget but the cuts will be “less than 10%, probably near 5%”, the EU’s Budget commissioner said yesterday.
“Cohesion policy is traditional but not old-fashioned,” Günther Oettinger said in an official meeting with the European Associations representing Regions and Cities that formed the Cohesion Alliance. The German Commissioner emphasised that his aim was to stabilize Cohesion Policy – one of the EU’s biggest financial envelopes – not to harm it.
Oettinger recalled the support extended to Germany’s reunification through structural funds but said that two major mistakes had been made in negotiating the previous Multi-annual Financial Framework (2014-2020).
One was that the leaders agreed to David Cameron’s proposal to lower the EU budget for the first time ever. The second was that the negotiations took a lot of time to conclude, leading to problems in the implementation period, which was shortened.
The Commissioner said that Brexit meant that all agencies, from agriculture to research, are fighting to keep their budgets. That is why, he said, we need to convince the member states “to pay a little more”, asking the Regions and the Cities to pass the message on to “The Hague, Helsinki, Vienna and Stockholm”, naming the capitals of the countries most resistant to an EU budget increase.
The Commission will reveal its official proposal for the EU budget on 2 May. (EurActiv)