3-4 May Regional Affairs Informal

Date: 09/05/1996

MINISTERS endorsed the European Commission's ideas for improving the effectiveness and control of the Union's Structural Funds and simplifying the procedures involved in distributing the money. Regional Policy Commissioner Monika Wulf-Mathies stressed the need to clarify the system, commenting: “Especially when it comes to the creation of jobs, it is important to facilitate the access to Structural Funds by simplifying the procedures as much as possible.” She pointed out that because of a lack of matching investment from the member states, some 23 billion ecu of funding had not been released for its intended purpose by the end of 1995. Among the ideas raised was a suggestion that the money should be handed over to the regional beneficiaries more quickly. France, among others, expressed concern that this would make the distribution of funding harder to control. Ministers also discussed the idea of establishing much clearer eligibility criteria.

THE meeting brought widespread agreement that the cultural sector could play an important role in creating jobs and developing less-favoured regions of the Union, when included in regional or local development strategies. Ministers generally supported a paper prepared by the Commission, acknowledging that culture could not be limited to preserving the cultural heritage, but should extend to market-related investments in the sector. “The economic aspects of culture will have to play a much more important role in the future, especially when it comes to job creation,” said Wulf-Mathies.

MINISTERS discussed the progress being made on the so-called European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP). This aims to provide an overall territorial strategy for the EU by combining member state spatial planning strategies with the EU policies most likely to alter its geography - such as regional policy, the Trans-European Networks, environment policies and the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). The committee on spatial planning will define the next steps, which will then be discussed under the Dutch EU presidency in the first half of 1997.