Europarlementariërs staan achter nieuwe regels voor het gebruik van de structuurfondsen (en)

EUOBSERVER / STRASBOURG - The European Parliament is set to greenlight with a huge majority a set of rules on how EU member states should use €308 billion of funds put aside for the next seven years to support poorer regions and boost social solidarity.

It is the very first regulation package on the EU's common so-called "structural funds," aimed at reducing regional discrepancies, after ten new countries mainly from central and eastern Europe joined the bloc in 2004.

Its financial ceilings and some basic criteria on how the funds should be spent were hammered out by EU leaders last December, but the parliamentarians pressed for some changes or clarifications in the guidelines.

Due to the overall decrease of the union's average GDP, some of the "old" member states will no longer qualify to receive cash from Brussels.

But one of four rapporteurs on the legislation setting out the principles and rules on how the money should be spent - Italian liberal MEP Alfonso Andria - argues "the new package represents the perfect balance" between needs of both camps.

His Greek centre-right colleague Konstantinos Hatzidakis pointed out "Of course, both countries and MEPs were fighting for their national point of view. And no one can say they have achieved 100 percent of what they wanted."

"But at the same time, there are no losers," Mr Hatzidakis noted.

Easier and greener

MEPs argue the new rules will be more environmentally friendly and less bureaucratic while at the same time providing more room for manouevre for the member states.

On the other hand, parliament had to fight with the national governments over its priority to boost the principle of "accessibility for people with disabilities" in using the structural funds.

"This means for example that when the EU cash is used to build infrastructure, this principle should be key to consider. But the national governments thought this was self-evident and were worried that a special stressing of this might tie their hands a bit," one parliament official noted.

But while member states backed down on this particular request from MEPs, the parliament did not manage to get a go-ahead for an idea to create a common fund where unspent money would be pooled, and then offered to countries which are better at spending the Brussels cash.

"At the beginning, some new member states thought this idea was directed against them but later it was mainly the biggest net payers to the EU budget that rejected such a fund," said the official.

Italian MEP Alfonso Andria also regrets that the council - the member states' decision-making body - disapproved with the idea to set up a system of prize awards for the best users of the so called cohesion funds - a special category in the package, mainly spent on infrastructure or environment projects.

"As a former mayor of Palermo, I could see what a positive motivation this used to be for people managing regional funds for which this competition has been established - the same would happen with the cohesion funds, I'm sure," said Mr Andria.

With or without such prizes, Mr Hatzidakis concluded "the real challenge will come now for the authorities to absorb the EU money and implement projects."