By Martin Banks - 27th October 2009
Abandoning the regional dimension of cohesion policy goes against development reality
Danuta Hubner
Former EU commissioner Danuta Hübner has criticised plans to reform the EU's regional policy.
The former regional policy commissioner said the commission's draft plans could end the provision of EU regional aid to 200 EU regions and 16 member states.
Hübner has seen a draft communication entitled "A Reform Agenda for a Global Europe - Reforming the Budget, Changing Europe", which has been prepared, but not yet adopted, by the commission.
The Polish MEP, who now chairs parliament's regional development committee, expressed her "concerns" over the proposals put forward in the draft.
In a letter sent last Thursday to the committee's MEPs, Hübner said the communication "presents opinions on the cohesion policy that go against everything that we have heard from the president of the commission over last years, months and weeks on the role of regions in the European multilevel governance and the role of cohesion policy in mobilising European development potential".
The draft text "aims at eliminating objective 2 of the cohesion policy which embraces two-thirds of all European regions", she said in the letter, noting that "this approach would result in a European policy absent in 200 regions out of 271 and 16 member states out of 27."
"Abandoning the regional dimension of cohesion policy not only goes against development reality but also against the principle of territorial cohesion, underpinned by the Lisbon treaty," the letter said.
Hübner has also written to commission president José Manuel Barroso expressing her concerns on the same issue.
The draft communication will be debated at the committee's next meeting on 3 and 4 November.
