Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, first I would like to thank everyone for their active involvement in preparing this report. The subject gave rise to some lively debate in committee and there were some good amendments to the report. The representatives of the Commission also brought their input to the discussion. I am delighted that the committee was in full agreement with the main aims of my report. In my opinion, the Union’s economic, social and territorial cohesion is an aim that is as essential as the single market or monetary union. The forthcoming enlargement is a major challenge, and it will also bring pressure for reform in the administration of regional policy and the Structural Funds. The purpose of this report is to analyse the problems of practical implementation and put forward proposals on how the operation of the Structural Funds might be improved within the framework of the existing rules and what facts should be taken into account in preparing the next reform. The report brings a practical viewpoint to the debate on regional policy kindled by the Commission. In order to obtain background information for my report, I sent a bulky questionnaire to a number of regions in each Member State. Replies have come in from almost every Member State, and, as a result, I learnt of the practical experience gained, directly from the regions and people who had implemented programmes. Now I wish to focus on the report’s most important conclusions. The first is the increase in effectiveness and results. In the practical implementation of the Structural Funds one should be aiming at effective and result-oriented use of appropriations, execution of projects according to timetable, and optimum project quality. In the regions, the administration of the Structural Funds is often felt to have become more difficult, and bureaucracy seems to have increased. The regions feel the financing provisions are complicated, partly unclear and open to interpretation, although the aim has certainly been otherwise. Funding should be channelled as directly as possible to the regions, which should be allowed to differentiate themselves from one another in order to be able to make effective use of the aid from the Structural Funds. With cooperation from the regions, Member States and the Union, administration should be improved so that the right actions target the right regions at the right time in terms of getting results. Management and its follow-up must be flexible and proportionate to the size of the programmes or projects. The n+2 rule for financing must be kept in force. The key aim of the report is the simplification and clarification of practices and administration, and increased results. The Court of Auditors has also criticised the complicated practices associated with the Structural Funds and called for simplification and better results, and this has also been the Commission’s aim, although there is still much to be done regarding this both by the Commission and the Member States. The second conclusion of the report was that programmes should not take so long to get started. The new programming period has got off the ground very slowly, with programmes taking as much as two years to be approved. The Member States have not been able to forward their documents on time, and the Commission was slow to process documents. Simplification and clarification will also help to avoid delays. As a possible remedy, the report suggests separating the periods covered by Objective Programmes and Community initiatives so that their preparation is not scheduled for the same time. In this way there would be more preparation time for both the Commission and the regions and the sort of delays that are occurring at present would not arise as we move into the next programming period. The third important conclusion of the report is that the principle of additionality should be applied. The Union’s regional policy has weakened the situation where EU funding replaces national funding: the regions have even seen more national money withdrawn from them that they have received from the Union. The Commission should review and clarify the rules for compliance with additionality so that this principle would also apply at programme and regional level. The fourth conclusion of the report is more effective evaluation and monitoring of the Structural Funds. Monitoring should be more concerned with results: what has been achieved with funding and how. Parliament should have open and transparent channels for obtaining information and arranging follow-up. The Commission should produce the necessary background information and reports in a clear form so that the committee and Parliament can use them effectively. When I was drafting the recommendations for voting, I supported the amendments that reinforced the conclusions of the report. My colleagues also tabled amendments regarding the content, which in themselves were worthy of support, but fell outside the scope of this report.

Political group: ELDR