SPEECH/06/138
Danuta Hübner
Member of the European Commission responsible for Regional Policy “Delivering Lisbon through Cohesion Policy”
Committee of the Regions – Territorial Dialogue 2006 Brussels, 1 March 2006
Mr President, Honourable Members of the Committee of the Regions, Ladies and Gentlemen,
First of all, I would like to thank the Committee of the Regions, and your outgoing President, Peter STRAUB, for the excellent cooperation we have had over the last year.
Working together with you has been an honour and pleasure for me. I look forward to continuing our fruitful cooperation over the next two years, under your new President Michel DELEBARRE, who brings with him enormous experience at the highest level of government, not only at the national level but also – and of course more importantly – at local and regional level.
This Committee has a vital role to play in the Union’s drive to “go local” and better reflect the concerns of citizens. I know that under Michel DELEBARRE’s presidency, you will make further strides towards involving local and regional partners more closely in the Union’s decision-making process and in defining and implementing our strategy for growth and jobs.
You can certainly count on my full support.
I want to talk to you today about, “Delivering Lisbon through Cohesion Policy”.
Let me first take you back a few years to the start of the Lisbon strategy and the Commission’s very first report to the Lisbon European Council in March 2000. The report aimed to set out what we can do to promote competitiveness, employment and cohesion in the Union. Yet the word “regional” is mentioned only three times, and one of those is a reference to regional over-regulation! And the structural funds are not mentioned at all.
In 2000, the Union paid lip-service to the idea of involving regional and local authorities, but we did not do very much about it. And perhaps that was part of the reason why the original Lisbon strategy was not the great success story many people had hoped for.
But we learned our lessons and last year we thoroughly reviewed the Lisbon strategy. We have made growth, jobs and competitiveness our top priority. Not only have we linked the structural funds with these aims, we have made them a fully fledged instrument of the new strategy. And we have said clearly that the strategy will only work if it is owned by all stakeholders – at EU, national, regional and local levels.
Gaining this recognition for cohesion policy within the Commission and among Member States has been a priority for me, and I hope this is reflected not only in what we say but also in what we are doing.
Last July, the Commission adopted draft Strategic Guidelines on cohesion policy. These set out our vision of how cohesion policy can help:
to make the EU a more attractive place to invest and work in; to transform the Union into an area of high growth, competitiveness and innovation; and to return Europe to full employment, with more and better jobs.
In December we went a step further by agreeing with Member States to set targets for the share of cohesion policy investment that is directly related to the Lisbon strategy. Each Member State would aim, over the course of the next programming period, to increase the share of funds devoted to competitiveness so that this averages at least 60 per cent in convergence regions, or even more – 75 per cent – in the regions which fall under our “Regional Competitiveness and Employment” objective.
We have labelled this “Lisbon earmarking”. In case “earmarking” sounds like a rigid approach, please be assured that it is not. Our approach leaves regions with ample flexibility to decide exactly how the funds should be invested.
Earmarking means dedicated funds for investments that directly strengthen competitiveness and job creation – in research and innovation, human capital, business services, major European infrastructures and improvement of energy efficiency. By investing in these areas, cohesion policy reinforces our drive for growth, jobs and competitiveness.
Does that mean that investments in other areas are irrelevant to growth and jobs? Absolutely not! Social cohesion and environmental sustainability remain as pillars of the renewed Lisbon strategy. And many projects in these areas also entail clear benefits, whether direct or indirect, for growth and jobs. Europe leads the world, for example, in environmental technologies. Community-led social initiatives can often be far more successful than national programmes when it comes to reintegrating people into the labour market.
Earmarking is not a legally binding requirement. In the case of the Member States which joined the Union in May 2004, it is strictly voluntary. That was the decision of the European Council in December. Personally, I wonder whether it would not have been better to maintain a consistent approach for the whole EU of 25. But I intend to ask all the new Member States to adopt the same approach on a voluntary basis. And I am hopeful, perhaps even confident, that they will accept.
There are no sanctions for missing targets, but what we will ask Member States to do is to report on how they have used cohesion policy in support of growth, jobs and competitiveness. They will do this each year, in the run-up to the Spring European Council, as an integral part of their overall Lisbon progress reports.
My feeling is that regions and Member States are fully behind the Commission on this, and that we will have no trouble in going the extra mile.
But let me be clear that earmarking is not only about investing significantly more in growth, jobs and competitiveness. While deciding on earmarking, you will, I hope, be thinking more strategically about how to make best use of the resources available. And you will be explicitly and much more deeply involved in delivering the Union’s strategy for growth and jobs. So this is no mere cosmetic change.
How are we getting on so far? Well, the Commission has recently produced its first annual progress report on the renewed Lisbon strategy. This takes stock of the national reform programmes that Member States submitted in the autumn, which of course were drafted before our earmarking proposal was on the table.
Overall, Member States have taken the renewed Lisbon strategy seriously. There is a common vision and a strong consensus about what needs to be done. If we can succeed in implementing the National Reform Programmes, then I believe there are genuine grounds for optimism about the Union’s economic future.
Many Member States have also made a serious effort to link cohesion policy with their broader reform programmes, though we will demand an even more coherent approach in future. We have to be clear that if national programmes do not address the issue of balanced regional economic development, and if they do not harness the structural funds for growth, jobs and competitiveness, then they are seriously incomplete.
Another area where I know there is much room for improvement is the involvement of regional and local partners in drawing up the reform programmes. For my part, I will urge Member States to involve you more closely in future. And I count on you to get involved, and to make contact as early as possible with those in national ministries who are responsible for preparing annual national progress reports. Tell them how your regions are planning to use the Structural Funds to promote growth, jobs and innovation!
The Commission’s report also highlights four priority actions which we ask the Spring European Council to endorse. These are:
investing more in knowledge and innovation; unlocking business potential, especially of small and medium-sized enterprises; responding to globalisation and ageing; and moving towards an efficient and integrated EU energy policy.
Once again, regions, through investments financed by the Structural Funds, are already doing a great deal in these areas, especially in research and innovation and in unlocking the potential of small and medium-sized enterprises.
And we will do more from 2007 onwards. One of our key priorities is “improving knowledge and innovation for growth”. Support from the Structural Funds for research facilities and staff enables many more institutions to compete for research funding on the basis of excellence. And we are strengthening the synergies between cohesion policy and other instruments, such as the Seventh Framework Programme. For example, regions are developing strategies for innovation through the Regions of Knowledge initiative, and they will use the Structural Funds to implement these strategies.
In financial engineering, our JEREMIE initiative will come on-stream in 2007, and it directly addresses a problem that many regions face, namely poor access to finance for innovative start-ups and SMEs. We are working with the European Investment Bank group to set up funds that can provide venture capital, loan guarantees and other financial instruments. Funds will be established at the regional level, in partnership with local and regional intermediaries who best understand local conditions and needs.
In June, I will host a major conference on innovating regions, innovation clusters and technology transfer, bringing together local, regional and national partners, business leaders, universities, bankers and venture capitalists. We will use this event to showcase best practice examples from the current programmes, and to spread these best practices more widely in the next programmes. This is how regional policy, through support for research and innovation, is helping European enterprise to compete in the global economy.
I know that you yourselves could mention many more examples of how our European regions are driving innovation, economic growth and the creation of sustainable jobs. Ladies and gentlemen, there are many more examples I could mention, but let me save them for the debate.
We are now just 10 months away from the beginning of 2007 and the opening of a new era for EU cohesion policy.
The December agreement between Member States on the financial perspectives means that, for the first time ever, we may be able to begin the new programmes right on schedule. It will take several more months to conclude the inter-institutional negotiations on the financial perspectives and to finalise our legal regulations. And it is essential that your preparations for the new programmes should proceed in parallel. But with your commitment, we are on track to make a flying start.
Of course, the true test of the renewed Lisbon agenda lies not in the quality of the strategy but in its effective implementation. Here again, your involvement is indispensable.
I do not believe we can ever fully achieve our aims of competitiveness and cohesion unless we make use of all the available resources, channel all of the available knowledge, and engage all stakeholders in a solid partnership.
Ladies and gentlemen, you have asked me to talk to you about delivering Lisbon through cohesion policy. But I might very well open the debate by saying: “You tell me!”.
