Brussels, 9 September 2024
“Check against delivery”
Dear Chair Dragoş Benea,
Honourable members,
Many thanks for this invitation.
My congratulations to the chair and vice-chairs, as well as to the Group coordinators.
In the coming years, it is you who will steer this ship.
So let me start, by paraphrasing one of my favourite quotes by Seneca: “The wind is favourable for the ship that knows which port it sails to.”
May Cohesion be the port to which you sail your ship, with the unwavering objective and understanding that cohesion is absolutely necessary for the wellbeing of our citizens, the prosperity of our Union and the functioning of the single market.
So dear Dragoş,
Dear vice-chairs,
Dear coordinators,
Dear members of the REGI committee,
I welcome your experience and knowledge of Cohesion Policy. Your personal commitment, as advocates of a strong Cohesion Policy supporting all regions – especially the less developed –will be crucial.
I am delighted to see so many MEPs with valuable experience, especially in local or regional government.
I have always said that local partners are crucial for Cohesion Policy’s success.
I encourage you all in the coming years to be advocates of this key principle that Europe cannot succeed without Cohesion Policy.
And Cohesion Policy cannot succeed without the local and regional partners.
So I’m glad to have this opportunity to meet you, and to share with you the achievements and the improvement needs of the policy, on which you will build.
It was Jacques Delors who said that every new step of European integration, every enlargement, had to be accompanied by a reinforced Cohesion Policy. So that, as Europe moves forward, no region, no city, is left behind, and no place nor person feels neglected or forgotten.
History shows how important Cohesion has been in key moments of EU integration, complementing the launch of the single market, the deepening of the Economic and Monetary Union or the successive waves of enlargement.
Thanks in part to the investments of Cohesion Policy, the countries that joined the EU in 2004 and in the following years saw their GDP per head increase from 52% of the EU average in 2004, to 80% today.
In other words, the gap with the EU average is less than half now what it once was.
We call this convergence. And this is essential.
Convergence has not come about by chance. It is not a “happy accident”. It has been driven by sustained, long term investments, over many, many years, in the key drivers of development.
Let me take the example of the 2014-20 programmes, which had until the end of 2023 to deliver investments and are now preparing for final payments and administrative closure.
This financing has supported 4.4 million businesses and helped to create 1.2 million new jobs. 5 million households were helped with energy savings, and 63 million people gained access to better healthcare services.
To this must be added investments in renewable energy and in public services, including education, health and transport.
In the 2014-20 period, Cohesion Policy was equivalent to 13% of total public investment in the EU, rising to over 50% in some Member States and regions.
In addition to the long-term investments, Cohesion Policy has proven vital in the various crises of the last few years.
Under the two Coronavirus Response Investment Initiatives (CRII), Cohesion Policy became one of the first responders to Covid, providing emergency support for healthcare for vulnerable groups and to keep businesses afloat. This represented 23.1 billion euros that were the immediate response to the impact of the coronavirus.
Thanks to excellent collaboration between the European Commission and this REGI committee, the changes to the legislation were produced within 2 weeks after the crisis was declared, and support was on the ground just 2 weeks later.
So, in 4 weeks we had this amount available to give a proper answer to the difficulties that the citizens and companies were facing.
Cohesion Policy was also the first to deliver under NextGenerationEU.
REACT-EU provided an extra support of 50.6 billion euros to top up existing programmes, bridging the gap between crisis and long-term growth.
Cohesion Policy was similarly speedy in reacting to subsequent crises.
The CARE and CARE+ packages mobilised 13.6 billion euros to support those welcoming Ukrainian civilians fleeing the war zone.
While the SAFE amendment – yet another immediate answer – released 4.2 billion euros to support SMEs and vulnerable households when the energy crisis struck.
In every crisis, collaboration between Commission and Parliament, through this REGI committee, was key to get things done.
I encourage you all to maintain this proud tradition, and indeed, to build on it.
So, what issues require attention? And what is coming up?
First, the need for quick, strong and efficient implementation of the 2021-27 programmes.
Despite our early start – we started working on this in spring 2019 – with all these crises there have been significant delays.
The reasons for delay are easy to understand: the Covid crisis, war in Ukraine, the energy shock.
But then, the need to prioritise crisis management has stretched the administrative capacity of Member States and managing authorities across Europe, causing delays in the normal long term investment procedures.
Implementation has now accelerated and by June this year, 23% of projects had been selected, reaching over 40% in some Member States.
But this pace must be maintained in the coming months and years.
Over the 2021-2027 period, Cohesion Policy’s 380 programmes will thus disburse a total of 378 billion euro (half a trillion euro if we include the national co-financing) to support almost 850 000 enterprises, help 6.5 million unemployed people find jobs and 723 000 homes with improved energy performance, to give you just a few examples.
Cohesion investments are expected to help create 1.3 million jobs and increase the EU’s GDP by 0.5% by the end of the implementation period.
The other big issue requiring attention is the future of the Policy, as part of preparations for the EU long-term budget after 2027.
To better prepare these discussions, I created an independent high-level group with people coming from local authorities, civil society and academia which presented a special report in February 2024.
Later, the 9th Cohesion Report and the Cohesion Forum, in Brussels, took stock of the situation, and drew lessons for the future.
The first lesson is that Cohesion Policy is needed more than ever.
There are many structural challenges ahead. The green transition. The digital revolution. Demographic changes, including an aging – and declining – population.
In all these challenges, without a strong Cohesion Policy we risk having an increase in disparities and some regions left behind.
Indeed, one of the economic facts of recent years is the emergence of development traps in Europe. These are regions which are stuck because of a lack of innovation capacity, or because of weak public services, or the need for growth-enhancing reforms, or because of brain drain and lack of skills.
Cohesion Policy must continue to support the territorial development of all regions, with a particular focus on the less developed, and those at risk of getting stuck in development traps.
At her hearing in July, President von der Leyen committed to a strengthened Cohesion, “ensuring that every region, every part of Europe is supported, and that no one is left behind”.
You will play a crucial part in ensuring that Cohesion remains high on the political agenda and that support to each region, according to its needs, is maintained, including with the required financial resources.
The second lesson is that investment is essential, it is a necessary condition, but it is in no way a sufficient condition to trigger development.
To deliver sustainable growth, a region needs to have adequate strategies to ensure administrative capacity, performing institutions, an appropriate legislative framework, a skilled workforce, a diversified and modernised economic system.
Through the “enabling conditions”, interventions in each policy field are already linked to appropriate reforms and capacity building.
But the link with reforms can be made stronger. Not any reform, but reforms to help to deliver better policy for Cohesion. To tackle development traps, the demographic, climate and socio-economic challenges, the appropriate preconditions must be in place.
So, the Policy can further explore how targeted reforms, including at the regional level, can remove obstacles to regional growth and convergence.
In this context, we can explore a more performance-based delivery model. Decoupling payments from real expenditure, but for this we need to have better targets against which we can measure compliance with the objectives. We can draw inspiration from other EU instruments.
This could have the double benefit of accelerating implementation and incentivising results.
However, such innovations must be carefully crafted so as not to prejudice the success and the DNA of the Policy.
And the DNA of the Policy includes the link to regions and to local partners.
And this is the third lesson: regions and cities must remain at the centre of our work.
The partnership principle must be preserved. Multi-level governance must be preserved.
Local people, local mobilisation, and local knowledge are essential for successful development. It’s the principle of subsidiarity.
This requires the involvement of national, regional, and local authorities, as well as universities, social partners, and civil society throughout the policy cycle. From the definition of development strategies, through to the selection and implementation of projects.
So, a key precondition is further capacity building, and administrative support to all the key partners.
The treaty objective of Cohesion is the reduction of regional asymmetries, and this must always be borne in mind.
5 years ago, I addressed the REGI committee as the Commissioner-Designate for Cohesion and Reforms.
We could not have imagined then what would happen in those 5 years.
But everything that happened has only served to underline that Europe needs Cohesion Policy.
It is needed to tackle long-term development traps, brain drain, and emerging demographic divides.
Needed to ensure that regions recover from crises, and continue on a long-term growth path.
Needed to help regions compete and thrive, in a fast-changing global economy.
Needed to ensure that, in our future green and digital economy, no place is left behind and no European feels forgotten.
These last 5 years, we have risen to the challenge.
But we could not have done it without the excellent collaboration between the European Commission, the REGI Committee, the Committee of Regions and the European Social and Economic Committee.
In the 5 years to come, Cohesion will be needed more than ever, and this excellent collaboration will be needed more than ever to keep Cohesion as a central pillar, policy and principle of our Union.
I wish you all a lot of success.
Thank you very much.
Source – EU Commission