CoR members gathering at their plenary session adopted today by overwhelming majority the draft opinion on the Simplification of the European Structural and Investment Fund (ESIF) from the perspective of Local and Regional Authorities by Petr Osvald, Councillor of Plzeň.
"Cohesion policy is one of the few EU instruments that has a direct, concrete and visible impact on citizens through hundreds of thousands of projects implemented all over Europe and which is thus able to improve their overall opinion of the EU, at a time when its popularity is declining", the rapporteur reminded CoR members. "Against a tendency to increase the nationalisation of the cohesion policy, we must work on improving its European added value" he pointed out, calling for a simplification of the overall implementation system, an increased flexibility and a better adaptation to the scale of the projects.
Going a step further, the rapporteur suggests that this should not only be limited to the ESIF but should also be extended to all financial programmes and EU policies by examining them in order to simplify them. “The aim of simplification is not to increase or facilitate the spending of ESIF resources, but to increase the effectiveness and creativity of projects, while at the same time making them easier to develop and implement and less risky for beneficiaries”, he pointed out.
Having this in mind, the rapporteur puts forward a set of concrete simplification-recommendations in the areas of public procurement, financial regulations and state aid: regarding public procurement, he calls for the EU rules to take precedence over national rules when it comes to ESIF supported investment. In addition, auditing and control procedures on tenders should be performed primarily ex ante, with the aim of preventing mistakes. Regarding gold-plating (the practice through which Member States sharpen regulatory burdens when transposing EU legislation), Osvald urges for a clearer definition of minimum requirements and for lessmargins for Member States to raise them. Last but not least, he calls for exempting cohesion policy from the application of state aid rules.
The opinion represents the CoR's main contribution to the works of the High Level Group set up by Commissioner Creţu on the Simplification of Structural Funds.
