EU budget and place-based policies

The European Committee of the Regions (CoR) adopted an own initiative opinion in November 2024 on “EU budget and place-based policies: proposals for new design and delivery mechanisms in the MFF post-2027” (Rapporteur: Marie-Antoinette MAUPERTUIS, President of the Corsican Assembly). This opinion is part of a package of own intiative opinions aimining to define CoR’s position ahead of the presentation by the Euroepan Commission of the proposals for the next MFF 2027.

The opinion contains a large number of recommendations, including that the CoR:

“calls on the European Commission to reduce the fragmentation of funds in the post 2027 MFF and calls for all funds contributing to financing just transition strategies to be based on a common integrated and strategic approach. A place-based approach should be taken for all relevant funds, including those supporting the Union’s industrial competitiveness”.

and, on consolidating integrated territorial development instruments:

“argues that before creating a new EU territorial development instrument, the European Commission should carry out a necessity check whereby a new instrument could only be created if sufficiently robust evidence is provided by the Commission that its aims cannot be delivered by expanding the remit, funding and beneficiaries of existing programmes…”.

and, on results-based financial management and simplification:

“maintains that while there is no doubt about the added value of Community Led Local Development the concerns raised by the European Court of Auditors need to be addressed if CLLD is to thrive”;

“believes that to do so, and in particular the key issue of excessive bureaucratic costs compared to the overall size of Local Action Groups (LAG) budget can be addressed by mirroring the much less bureaucratic financial arrangements (advance payment, limited certification of expenditure in pluriannual reporting periods) that are already in place for Horizon Europe projects for rural and territorial development, bearing in mind that Horizon projects of such type and the average LAG have an equivalent average financial size of EUR 5 million”.

Click below for the full text of the opinion.