Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-02-06-Speech-3-286"
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"en.20020206.11.3-286"2
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I would firstly like to thank Mr Pohjamo for his excellent report, for the interest he always shows, as do the other members of the Committee on Regional Policy, Transport and Tourism and its new chairman, Mr Caveri, and as did the previous chairman, Mr Hatzidakis, for their collective efforts to make the management of regional policy and Structural Funds more straightforward and more efficient.
As regards the sensitive question of natural or ecological disasters, which you mentioned in your report, Mr Pohjamo, I wish to point out that changes can be made to the programmes, as we have done in the past, with the Italian, Portuguese and Greek programmes, for example, when there were earthquakes between 1997 and 1999, or, more recently, in France, because of the hurricane. That does not, of course, take into account the freedom that the national and regional authorities have within the programmes adopted by the Commission to finance projects that they believe to be most applicable and, if necessary, to re-deploy or re-programme appropriations.
My third comment is that I naturally want to reiterate that everyone, myself in particular, must comply with the regulations that the legislator wanted in order to supervise the management of the Structural Funds. It is in the light of this reminder that I must examine certain proposals that you have put forward, Mr Pohjamo. Therefore, your proposals on imposing penalties for infringing the additionality principle or for cutting short a programming period are to be taken into account in the current debate on the future of the cohesion policy. I took note of these proposals and the comments for use in the debate and I will take them into account. But beware of proposals that could involve modifying the legislative framework, or even amending the Treaty itself, such as the idea of creating a single regional development fund.
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, whilst respecting the competences and the responsibilities of our respective institutions, I would like to reaffirm to you that the Commission is at your disposal and is willing to loyally fulfil its duty to keep Parliament informed. It will do this by regularly reporting back on the use of the Structural Funds, including by objective, as I have started to do for Objective 1 and as I will do for Objective 2; by systematically informing the House of our work by means of reports, including reports which provide assessments, and by coming before the committees on a regular basis, such as the Committee on Regional Policy, Transport and Tourism, and the Committee on Budgetary Control. In fact, I shall be doing this in a few days’ time. I think that together this forms a solid basis for a genuinely transparent, sincere and ongoing dialogue between our institutions.
Lastly, I would like to confirm the links that I am establishing between the report by Mr Pohjamo and the next report, and that all these comments on improving the management of Structural Funds will be very useful to me, to us, in drawing up the Commission guidelines on the future regional policy. I believe that better management of appropriations, provided in a timely fashion, for useful projects in each of our regions, that the proper use of Structural Funds during this period, will be evidence and an argument for pursuing, or even stepping up all our actions by revamping regional policy in the next agenda. That is why, Mr Pohjamo, I would like to express my sincere thanks to you for the time that you have taken, for your initiative in drawing up this report on the current management of Structural Funds.
Ladies and gentlemen, I think it is very important for the Commission to receive both encouragement and constructive criticism. I have been listening very closely and with great interest to each of the speakers and, if I may, I would like to write to some of you within the next few days in order to clarify a number of points.
Mr Pohjamo, the Commission supports your comments regarding the financial execution, particularly the very severe and very strict n+2 rule that is to be applied, as well as your remarks on monitoring and control and also on the quality of the programmes and projects. Like you, we have seen that there are some difficulties in the management of funds.
In the few minutes that I have, I would like to make three comments to clarify or explain the work of the European Commission. My first comment concerns the new rules for the 2000-2006 period, which were laid down for a new working method and which also defined new responsibilities for those involved in the management of Structural Funds. Each of the persons involved needed time to prepare and get up to speed. In the case of our Directorate-General, these changes came about at the same time as the internal reorganisation of the whole institution. I am not looking for excuses; I simply want to give an explanation. These new regulations were also drawn up from much stricter requirements regarding the quality of programmes. I am thinking, for example, of the provisions governing the ex-ante appraisal. In this area too, the various players needed time to understand and grasp these new requirements.
There are also areas where this change required a choice to be made between several objectives. I shall give an example that you yourself, Mr Pohjamo, mentioned. You quite rightly pointed out that the negotiations on the programme documents took an average of eight to twelve months to complete, instead of the five months scheduled by the legislator. The truth, and I want to be honest about this, as I always am before this House, is that a five-month deadline to draft a document that is intended to cover a seven-year period was not realistic, when you understand the tough challenges involved and the amounts involved in the Structural Funds. A choice had to be made between completing the job rapidly, sometimes even in a hurry, and quality.
The Commission, I must say, and I think that you will acknowledge this, decided to put the quality of the programme documents before all else. Given the excessive number of months taken to complete the programming – and I repeat, Mr Pohjamo, that I took careful note of your comment, and I may come back to this point later when we discuss the report by Mr Musotto – I decided, in future, to propose that the Commission anticipate, as far as possible, the presentation of its proposals on the new regional policy, namely, the new agenda beginning in 2007, so that we can begin programming and implementing projects at the very beginning of the agenda, rather than two years later, because I share your sentiment.
Second, within the limits of the room for manoeuvre that these texts allow, the Commission is already committed to responding to certain problems that you have raised, Mr Pohjamo. I would firstly like to reiterate our desire to approach the management of Structural Funds in a transparent manner, and the communication that the Commission adopted on 5 July on the results of the programming of funds for Objective 1 between 2000-2006 is evidence of this.
The Commission has also recently simplified the procedures for handling programming complements, which was an area of criticism. I heard many regional chairmen and ministers voice this criticism. I also decided to set up, in order to study all the areas where we could simplify matters, a working group between my office and the Directorate-General on regional policy, so that we could make specific progress with simplification. Remember that the commissioner speaking to you, ladies and gentlemen, is speaking to you using a wealth of experience and hindsight that I have gained, and cannot forget, from being chairman of a local authority in his own country. Therefore, I understand very well this need to reduce bureaucracy and excessive complications. The only boundary that I have, to tell the truth, and which I will not exceed, is that I must supply accounts, accurate accounts, sometimes very detailed accounts on several thousand euro, both to the budgetary control authority – in other words, the European Parliament – and to the Court of Auditors. It is my personal responsibility, that of the Commission, to provide fair accounts when they are requested."@en1
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