A transition period for the regions coming out of the ‘convergence’ category and a ‘territorial pact’ for the ‘Europe 2020’ agenda are the two big ideas of Michael Schneider, the Committee of the Regions rapporteur on the future of cohesion policy and ‘Europe 2020’. The Saxony-Anhalt secretary of state does not see any contradiction between the crisis and helping the ‘poorest of the richest’ or between rationalisation and flexibility.

Do the crisis and budgetary restrictions pose a threat to cohesion policy?

You cannot deny the fact that there are budgetary pressures hanging over European Union member states and the Union itself, but the aim of the cohesion policy is precisely to promote growth, which in turn increases tax revenue. Given that it contributes to countering the deep causes of the financial crisis, it is more relevant than ever.

I don’t have the feeling that member states are tempted to renationalise regional policy. In any case, that isn’t the case in Germany. The situation is very different from how it was five or six years ago, when the current period was being prepared.

Should cohesion policy be reformed?

In the Committee of the Regions’ opinion, the current principles need to be maintained overall while adapting them to economic conditions. Without giving any figures, we are asking for a significant part of the EU budget to be allocated to cohesion policy, precisely because it has a significant impact on growth.

The main change for the upcoming period concerns the regions in transition. We have a problem that had not arisen until now. Several regions have a GDP that exceeds the threshold of 75% of the EU average, which means that they are no longer ‘convergence’ regions but they are not yet robust enough to be part of the Objective 2 (competitiveness and jobs) regions. We think that we need a solution tailored to these regions and our position is widely shared. How can one justify that German regions stay in convergence while some regions from the ‘new’ member states, such as Mazowsze in Poland, would come out? Warsaw is a rich region, but there are enclaves in Mazowsze around Warsaw which are less so. This produces a GDP that is high overall, but is unequally distributed. The same goes for several European regions. Île-de-France is often cited as an example of a heterogeneous region. This is another problem for which a solution needs to be found within Objective 2: these regions must have more flexibility in the allocation of resources.

Is the idea of flexibility compatible with that of concentrating resources?

Yes. We can focus on certain precise objectives while giving the regions more freedom in implementing them even if that initially seems to be contradictory. I think we need to make significant efforts to put in place this ‘place-based policy’ (local approach) advocated by the Barca report. Currently, Objective 2 aid is organised in too centralised a manner and is not well adapted to the specific needs of each region.

Do you see the need for more checks and penalties?

No, on the contrary, there are currently too many checks and overly complicated mechanisms hamper the effectiveness of cohesion policy. We need to simplify the bureaucracy.

Is there a need to connect cohesion policy with Europe’s 2020 agenda?

One of the reasons for the failure of the Lisbon strategy is that local and regional authorities did not take part sufficiently in the development of initiatives that they then had to put in place. We are asking for local authorities to be involved in Europe’s 2020 agenda from the outset.

Along these lines, together with Lambert van Nistelrooij (EPP, Netherlands) at the European Parliament, we have asked for a territorial pact to be reached between local, regional and national authorities. [European Commission President] José Manuel Barroso, [European Council President] Herman van Rompuy and [European Parliament President] Jerzy Buzek are supporting us and Barroso has asked us to make proposals to make this pact concrete.

We also need to have a debate on cohesion policy’s contribution to the implementation of Europe’s 2020 agenda. One cannot just take a part of the budget from cohesion policy for sectoral policies. The specificity of cohesion policy needs to be confirmed. This will be an important point in the opinion that I will be presenting in October.