Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-03-24-Speech-2-014"
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"en.20090324.3.2-014"2
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"Madam President, firstly I would like to thank wholeheartedly Lambert van Nistelrooij, Constanze Krehl, Oldřich Vlasák, Wojciech Roszkowski, Miroslav Mikolášik and Zsolt László Becsey for the opportunity generated for us to have this discussion today. It is a discussion that will certainly contribute to the debate on the future cohesion policy.
All the reports underline the need for cohesion policy to respond to new challenges such as demography, energy, climate and globalisation. All European regions will be affected by those new challenges, but their impact will vary significantly across Europe, often resulting in losses of competitiveness, employment and social cohesion. This might consolidate existing disparities and create new ones, but these challenges can also be turned into opportunities. To achieve this we need to continue emphasising cohesion policy investment in research and development, and innovation in developing a knowledge-based economy and in promoting entrepreneurship and business support services. These are key factors for boosting the sustainable competitiveness of the European economy and for generating sustainable jobs and growth. They are at the heart of cohesion policy and have a strong territorial dimension, which requires tailor-made solutions and policy support.
To render the management of cohesion policy programmes more efficient – and this is our common concern – there is a need to reinforce inter-regional exchanges of experience and of good practice. Good governance practice must be disseminated rapidly across Europe. This may help also to overcome difficulties in implementing cohesion programmes. I share your view that we must continue to reform policy delivery.
You call for fostering the effort devoted to so-called ‘financial engineering’ as a means of tapping the potential of the private sector. As you well know, in an important cultural shift, we have decided to complement a traditional ground-based approach with new tools.
Your support for our micro-credit initiative is good news, and I thank you very much for this. I am convinced that developing micro-credit schemes is crucial for the sustainable development and competitiveness of European regions and cities. It requires action to be taken at all levels. We will look into ways and means of reinforcing this instrument in the future.
You call also for a strengthening of the fundamental principles of cohesion policy, such as partnership, multi-level governance and transparency, and I fully endorse that call. By building on local knowledge, by involving all the relevant actors on the ground and by improving the visibility of the European cohesion policy, we will certainly enhance the impact and the quality of European cohesion investment.
Once again, my thanks for your continuous efforts to render cohesion policy more effective and more efficient in the future.
We are in the middle of that debate, as you know, and there are many very specific recommendations in your reports, which I will take as important inputs into this debate on the future cohesion policy, while there are also several major messages that cut across all the reports.
The first is that cohesion policy is, and should remain, a central pillar for achieving the European Union’s sustainable development goals. That commitment will remain even more relevant in the post-crisis period, when generating green-collar jobs will be the European pass to sustainable employment.
There is also another clear message in all the reports, which is that cohesion policy should cover all the European territory, while the focus of cohesion policy should clearly remain on supporting the catch-up process of the poorest. I share your view on the importance of delivering European public goods in all regions. The crisis makes that message even more relevant. Many regions are looking these days at new ways and means of adapting to rapid global changes and avoiding the risk of falling behind. By mobilising under-utilised resources and exploiting comparative advantages, cohesion policy aims to ensure that all European regions, be they lagging behind or not, contribute to overall economic growth and change and to the creation of sustainable jobs, and that all citizens can benefit from the internal market.
We also share the conviction that geography matters in Europe, and this is one of the main reasons we launched the green paper on territorial cohesion. I am very pleased to see that you understand territorial cohesion in a way that is close to my heart, which is that territorial cohesion is first of all about mobilising the development potential of all the different territories. Regional policy is a development policy that helps citizens and enterprises unlock the inherent potentials of the places in which they live and work.
I agree with you on the need to improve synergies and coordination between all European and national policies with a territorial impact. Here, the challenge is for territorial cohesion to be taken into account upfront when designing policies, and not to be seen as a tool to repair the damage once it has been done. This means, among other things, that we need to invest more in linking the regions that are lagging behind with the more prosperous ones.
Your message is also clear on the need to strengthen the urban-rural relationship. Faced with the present fragmentation of funds, it also means that we need to understand better how to streamline the rules and procedures for all the funds with respect to eligible expenditure, management, monitoring, reporting and financial management obligations.
There is a need for greater flexibility when delineating the territories in which cohesion policy programmes are designed and implemented. In other words, we need to target the policy at functional areas. We need, for example, to look sometimes inside cities at neighbourhood level, and sometimes beyond the boundaries of the cities, at metropolitan level.
This functional or flexible geography does not stop at national borders, and cooperation across national borders is of clear European added value and importance for citizens. There are still barriers in the European internal market, and significant untapped potential in cross-border labour markets and transnational clusters. The Baltic Sea Strategy, which we are preparing now, is a good example of what we mean by a functional area. I see this as a test case for territorial cohesion, which could then be extended to other macro-regions. We are working on this."@en1
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