As the commissioner responsible for regional development in the Barroso I Commission, Danuta Hübner began the macro-regional approach with the strategy for the Baltic Sea. It is a strategy for which, from the outset, no additional funding was set aside. Those who hoped for it “were mistaken,” she admitted in an interview withEuropolitics . For the former commissioner and current chair of the REGI committee, it is not so much a lack of funds that makes implementation of the strategy difficult, but the lack of coordination and synergy between the funds and related policies, be they EU, national, regional or other.

The first macro-regional experiment, the strategy for the Baltic Sea, does not have a special budget. And yet there are costs, aren’t there?

Right from the moment it was devised, the strategy for the Baltic Sea was based on the fact that it would not benefit from any additional money from the EU budget. The main aim was to facilitate existing coordination in the region and to make the projects carried out there more effective. To say there is no need for money to develop this strategy is going too far. There are running costs: we have to organise various meetings with interested parties (national, local, regional authorities, professional organisations and NGOs) to put in place a ‘bottom up’ based policy. Even the preparation phases have a cost… The Commission itself has had to invest to equip itself with the means to coordinate this process, even if only in terms of human resources. So, yes, there are additional costs even if the aim is to facilitate existing projects relating to cohesion policy and other national and EU policies. European financial institutions, such as the European Investment Bank or national and regional ones, also intervene. But the aim is clearly not to obtain more money from the EU. It is also important to note a growing interest in this strategy, which is attractive for investors, and that other sources of funding are possible. The money that is needed will be there.

Without more money, how can the strategy be financed?

The weakness is that projects carried out under the heading of cohesion policy and those that come under other European policies are not well coordinated. We need to coordinate European, national and regional policies much better. There are funds available in the region: not just EU funds but also national funds and/or those coming from financial institutions. I think that we need to think about the possibility of obtaining funds from these other sources. This strategy is very innovative and very attractive for investors. When I was commissioner, I met Nordic institutions present in the Baltic region prepared to finance projects, especially those in the areas of innovation and research. I am optimistic because I think that the problem is not really a funding one. The real problem is about having good projects that really deal with the problems of the region, be they related to transport, energy, innovation, environment or whatever. I don’t think that funding is the real problem. But you have to have clear ideas and know how you are going to finance them. There are lots of funds in the region. There are Structural Funds but also funds from other European policies. We need to use them better, just like the funds from financial institutions or other institutions that have expressed their interest, without forgetting public-private partnerships. Private investors also have a role to play and need to increase their participation.

Could the European Groupings of Territorial Cooperation (EGTCs) be an alternative or complementary tool?

A lot has been said about this instrument in relation to the strategy because it was designed for this type of activity. It is envisaged not just for funding bilateral projects as part of cross-border cooperation, but also for projects in which several countries and several regions are involved, which is the case for the Baltic strategy. I hope that we will see the EGTC develop in this region as in other regions that have already experienced it.

There are about a dozen EGTC projects, but none in the Baltic. Why is that?

I think that it is because, in this region, there is no tradition of cooperation as we see for example in Western Europe between the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium. For the Baltic countries, which recently joined the EU, cooperation is still something quite new even if there are some regional institutions, such as the Helsinki Commission (HELCOM), which have a lot of experience of it. I hope to see examples of use of the EGTC in the region very soon. One idea might be to start by using the HELCOM framework. That said, one has to admit that cooperation between countries in the Baltic region in the framework of the EU is not yet that well developed.

Other macro-regional strategies (the Danube, the Black Sea) have been announced. How can the issue of funding them be resolved at a time when the financial budget for the 2013-2020 period is being negotiated?

My idea is that macro-regional cooperation could replace cross-border cooperation envisaged by Objective 3 of cohesion policy, which is a kind of ‘top down’ policy. In terms of territorial cooperation, I think that this kind of cooperation is more suited than what we have in Objective 3 because this initiative is based on the concept of ‘functional geography’, ie on the fact that different regions are aware that they need to work together to improve efficiency. But one can also imagine this initiative as being complementary to Objective 3. I also think that we need to seriously ask ourselves the question of how to make these programmes more efficient and financing plays an important role in this. I also think that we need to integrate projects from other European polices and not only from cohesion policy and that the latter must be able to play a coordinating role. It is important that all the policies are committed to macro-regional cooperation projects. One can have a macro-regional approach for very specific projects. It is not always necessary to have a full strategy.

Transport is an example of a concrete project. People have talked about setting up a transport fund… what do you think about that?

No. I am in favour of cooperation between all the existing funds. But I think that it is very dangerous to divide the EU’s budget into sectors. I think that the nature of development today is not sectoral and that, to have a more efficient policy at the European level, we need a cross-cutting approach. In terms of transport, there are lots of projects that concern towns, regions and others that are based on a very innovative approach. For the development of urban sustainable transport, for example, there are problems for which an environmental approach is very important. I think that there are lots of funds in lots of policies that can contribute to the development of transport infrastructure in Europe. There are also lots of financial institutions, investment banks, national budgets and budgets of regions and towns. But we need to have an authority to coordinate all these funds. Creating a fund for transport would be a mistake. What Europe needs is well-organised coordination of what already exists, probably within the European Commission, which must have the necessary capacity to coordinate the funds and possible synergies. Europe absolutely needs better coordination of all the funds.

Structural Funds seem to be being questioned when, at the same time, people are talking about reserving part of them to implement certain policies. Isn’t that a contradiction?

I think that everything that moves towards dividing budgets into sectors is a huge mistake. It would be a step backwards because everyone today fully understands, including in China and the US, that development is a cross-cutting challenge. One cannot resolve transport problems without taking into account the environment, innovation and decisions at the level of regions and towns. If the Commission proposes a budget by sector, this will be bad for the EU and would reduce the efficiency of European budgets. We must always improve the EU’s capacity to carry out European policies in a cross-cutting way. I would also like to underline that the ‘earmarking’ practised in cohesion policy between 2007 and 2013 works very well and that member states, regions and companies are all positive about it. It allows us to focus efforts on a limited number of priorities and to improve the quality of projects. I am in favour of earmarking, but totally against dividing budgets into sectors. That is different. Earmarking is done for innovation, for sustainable transport and for other cross-cutting problems. I think that if we can earmark (including in cohesion policy) funds for multiregional projects, that may be one of the solutions for the future. It will depend a lot on what will be done with Objective 3, with territorial cooperation policy and with what the Commission will propose in general. I think that we can have cross-border cooperation as we have today but we can also imagine a reorganisation of Objective 3. I also think that envisaging the possibility of having projects at the macro-regional level will be very important. We know full well today that there are problems that can only be tackled via very strong cooperation between the regions of different countries.