By Chris Jones - 8th December 2006
New rules on the use of EU funding should lead to greater value for money, regional policy commissioner Danuta Hübner said on Friday.
With a new seven-year programme of regional funding due to begin on January 1, the European commission has finally approved new regulations governing the way in which the money must be allocated.
Nine existing sets of regulations will be merged into one under the new regime, and the rules will also be simpler in that national governments will have a far greater say both in the allocation of funding and on controlling that the money is being properly spent.
But they will also have to be more open about who is receiving the money, with an obligation to publish information on the beneficiaries of EU money.
“We hope that this commitment to greater transparency will lead to an improvement in the quality of the programmes put forward for EU funding,” Hübner said.
“One or two member states questioned our desire to publish the details of who receives the money, but in the end the support was unanimous.”
Countries will also be obliged to increase the amount of money they spend on projects linked to the EU’s Lisbon strategy for jobs and growth, and there has been a sharp increase in the amount of money targeted for innovative projects, the Polish commissioner said.
“Even in the new member states, which are not obliged to focus on Lisbon priorities as they are in the EU15, support has been high.”
“Malta, for example, has pledged to double the amount of money it spends on Lisbon-related projects in the next seven years.”
Hübner said she had no concerns that member states would be unable to spend all the money allocated to them – a perennial problem for some countries.
“Our information for the new member states at the start of November shows that their absorption capacity is running at 99.99 per cent – and we still have time before December 31 to reach 100 per cent.”
Take-up of funding in the EU15 is slightly lower – at around 95 per cent – but Hübner said that this was the usual state of affairs for December.
“I have been here for three Decembers now, and the situation now is better than either of the previous two. There is still time for member states to send in their claims for money before the end of the year.”
She said that Greece and Italy in particular still had some way to go to spend all the money allocated to them by the end of the year.
Countries that do not spend all the money given them within three years will have to return the cash to the EU pot under the so-called N+2 rule.
But the commissioner said that all member states had “taken the challenge seriously” and that she did not expect to see countries lose money simply because they could not find ways to spend it.
Only six member states – Austria, Latvia, Malta, Hungary, Denmark and Poland – have submitted formal programmes for regional funding for the next seven years – and only Malta’s programme is expected to be approved in time for the start of the next budget period.
But the commissioner said she was not concerned about the delays from other member states.
“We have worked very closely with member states and regional authorities to help them draw up their draft programmes, and this should make it quicker and easier to approve them when they are formally submitted,” she said.
“We should be able to speed up the whole process by at least a year as a result of this groundwork.”
But she urged member states that had not submitted their plans to do so “as soon as possible”.
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