Call for inner cities to get more EU funds

Date: 10/02/2000

By Simon Coss

THE European Parliament is set to call for more EU cash to be spent on regenerating the most run-down parts of Europe's cities when it votes on the issue next week.

The full assembly is likely to support the demands made by its regional affairs committee, which last week unanimously adopted a report drawn up by UK Socialist MEP Arlene McCarthy on the URBAN programme - a scheme designed to promote economic and social regeneration in poverty-stricken areas of the Union's cities.

In her report, McCarthy argues that plans unveiled by the European Commission last October to devote just €700 million to the initiative between 2000 and 2006 are not generous enough.

She says EU governments should agree to find cash from other sources to top up this amount and suggests this could be done by transferring unused funds from other budget lines. She is also calling on member states to increase what she regards as the arbitrary allocation of €500 per inhabitant of areas eligible for URBAN funding.

The URBAN programme was launched in 1994 and was due to be scrapped this year under the Commission's original Agenda 2000 proposals, which set out the EU's overall spending plans for the next seven years.

But after intensive lobbying by the Parliament, URBAN was finally granted a reprieve by Union leaders at last March's Agenda 2000 summit in Berlin.

Supporters of the scheme argue that the EU's structural funds, which aim to iron out economic imbalances between the Union's richest and poorest regions, have traditionally been channelled towards large regional governments rather than urban administrations, even though the vast majority of EU citizens now live in cities. As a result, they insist, there is a need for a separate fund targeted specifically at urban areas.

The full Parliament will also vote next week on calls from its regional affairs committee for a number of changes to the way in which aid for regions that straddle two or more EU countries is shared out.

In a report on the INTERREG programme which has been approved by the committee, French Christian Democrat MEP Francis Decourrière argues that the scheme should more clearly target the EU's remotest regions and areas bordering the central and eastern European countries currently lining up to join the Union.

He maintains that creating strong cross-border links between existing EU member states and those bidding for membership is a vital prerequisite for successful enlargement eastwards.

The Commission has called for €4.9 billion to be spent on INTERREG initiatives between 2000 and 2006. This money would be used to finance up to 75% of the cost of approved projects in the Union's poorest Objective 1 regions and up to 50% elsewhere.