When the Commission is called upon to assess a major project selected by a Member State with a view to financing by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and to take a decision under Article 41 of Regulation No 1083/2006 laying down general provisions on the European Regional Development Fund, the European Social Fund and the Cohesion Fund, it is not restricted by the selection criteria set by that Member State.

As is clear from Regulation No 1083/2006, that evaluation by the Commission differs from the selection made by the Member State both in its methods and its objective. Firstly, it is in the sole context of the relation between the Commission and the Member State that the operations for the Commission to assess and confirm, or not, an ERDF or Cohesion Fund financial contribution to a Member State for a major project. The Commission makes no selection of the major projects proposed to the national authorities by the applicants but merely, and solely as regards the Member States, assesses major projects already selected by the national authorities and submitted to the Commission to confirm or refuse an ERDF or Cohesion Fund financial contribution. Secondly, the Commission’s evaluation does not seek to check the selection made by the Member State in the light of the selection criteria set by the monitoring committee but to assess, in the light of the information provided for that purpose in Article 40 of Regulation No 1083/2006 and contained in the request for confirmation, as stated in recital 49 of that regulation, the purpose and impact of the major project and the methods by which the EU resources are proposed to be used, which evaluation is to be carried out, under Article 41(1) of that Regulation, by assessing the major project on the basis of that information, its coherence with the priorities of the operational programme, its contribution to the achievement of the objectives of those priorities and its coherence with other EU policies.

Furthermore, since the Commission is not bound by the selection criteria set by the Member State in the context of the evaluation of a major project under Article 41 of Regulation No 1083/2006, the fact that it did not restrict its evaluation to those criteria does not constitute a breach of the principle of cooperation in good faith. When a Member State makes a request for confirmation in respect of a major project, the evaluation of that request is subject to the rules laid down in Articles 39 to 41 of Regulation No 1083/2006. Reliance on the principle of cooperation in good faith cannot lead to the application of different rules or, in particular, to a restriction to the selection criteria set by the Member State. That conclusion is not called into question by the fact that, in the context of the work of the monitoring committee, a Commission representative did not dispute the selection criteria on the basis of which the project was selected. The lack of objection cannot be interpreted as meaning that the Commission is bound to confirm, in the context of the evaluation procedure laid down in Articles 39 to 41 of Regulation No 1083/2006, a financial contribution to every major project selected by the managing authority on the basis of those criteria.

(see paras 48-51, 54, 55, 57)