It is evident that the EU’s future Cohesion Policy will be geared towards serving the EU2020 strategy. This was already largely the case with the Lisbon strategy: the concept of ‘earmarking’, introduced in Structural Funds regulations for the 2007-2013 period, provides that 60% of funds received by the regions for the ‘convergence objective’ and 75% of funds received by them for the ‘competitiveness and employment objective’ must be reserved for projects that contribute towards implementing the Lisbon strategy. Although this allocation is only compulsory for the EU15 countries, the European Commission has repeated on several occasions - backed up by figures - that a large share of the €347 billion allocated to this policy in the 2007-2013 period will be invested in the priorities of the strategy, including the knowledge economy, research and development, innovation and energy efficiency. This is also true of countries with significant requirements in terms of infrastructure investment.

Formal proposals for the new Cohesion Policy, post-2013, will not be made before 2011. But debates are underway and demonstrate that the situation will not be any different for the next programming period, even if the regions like to recall that Cohesion Policy cannot be at the sole service of the EU2020 strategy. The ‘EU2020’ argument will, no doubt, also be useful for Cohesion Policy at the time of difficult budget negotiations in the future, in order to justify a policy, which would continue to be aimed at all EU regions. Because the need for structural reforms highlighted in the Commission’s consultation document - moving towards a “more intelligent and greener” economy - concerns all regions, whatever their level of development.