Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-03-24-Speech-2-011"
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"en.20090324.3.2-011"2
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"Madam President, the reform of the European Union’s structural policy for the period 2007-2013 has brought with it changes to the structure of the Funds and the basis for the allocation of assistance. One important change was the creation of a new European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development linked to the common agricultural policy. Whereas the 2000-2006 Financial Perspective tied rural development funding in with the Structural Funds and cohesion policy, separating it from CAP funding, under the new 2007-2013 Financial Framework they became part of the allocations linked to the CAP. As a consequence of these changes, however, the question arises as to whether this separation has actually led to more effective use of the available funding.
Linking the CAP and rural development funding represents a simplification of the budgetary arrangements in appearance only. In reality, it means the separation of non-agricultural funding from the scope of the cohesion policy and as a result, either the duplication of some objectives, or their omission in both areas. There is a risk that the funding available under the regional policy will be used to a large extent to boost economic competitiveness in larger urban centres or the most dynamic regions, while the rural development fund will be focused on non-agricultural improvement, on improving agricultural competitiveness. In this situation, spending on support for non-agricultural activities and the development of SMEs in rural areas would be at the interface between the two funds and not be covered by either of them.
There could also be a shortage of funding to ensure basic public services and investment in infrastructure in rural areas, to which the Cohesion Fund is also meant to contribute. In this context it is becoming particularly important to come up with a transparent, long-term development strategy for rural areas at Member State and at regional level, in order to identify clearly rural development priorities and objectives and adapt to them the various sources of funding available. Linking the second pillar to cohesion policy measures would, however, require the close coordination of activities at national level.
What constitutes a rural area has yet to be defined with any precision. Traditionally, rural areas could be differentiated from urban areas through their lower population density, different employment structure, lower level of income and poorer access to public roads. From the point of view of territorial cohesion, which, I repeat, has also not been adequately defined, lower population density should not be the decisive characteristic.
One of the European Union’s development aims is to modernise social structures, including employment structures. It is possible to increase territorial cohesion, therefore, by aligning rural and urban employment structures. Level of income and access to public goods, however, remain the biggest challenge to territorial cohesion, and these objectives can be most effectively met by supporting non-agricultural activities in rural areas. Rural development should not, however, drain resources intended for direct payments to farmers.
The difficulty in implementing rural development policy stems from the fact that sectoral policies and territorial cohesion policies overlap, as do the economic and social dimensions, and therefore previous activities have focused on a separation of powers, rather than creating synergies. The aim of coordination should, however, be to create synergies in the use of funds. In the individual Member States, several models exist for the coordination of these activities, and it is currently difficult to claim that a particular country’s solution should serve as a model for others. It does appear, though, that political will could be more decisive in terms of ensuring success than this or that organisational arrangement. A suitable solution could therefore be to apply the open method of coordination to this aspect of cooperation at Union level.
However, it should be made clear that rural development policy has a huge impact on territorial cohesion. For this reason, it does not seem justifiable to separate measures under this policy from cohesion and regional development policy. This policy is better able than the CAP to assist with non-agricultural aspects of rural development, such as retraining people for work in other areas of the economy. Nevertheless, including rural development policy within cohesion policy is only possible on the condition that rural development receives adequate funding."@en1
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