WRITTEN QUESTION E-0480/98 by Richard Howitt (PSE) to the Commission (27 February 1998)

Subject: Respect for local and regional diversity within structural fund programmes

Would the Commission accept the criticism that the SPDs agreed with the United Kingdom in the period 1994-97 were too often identical for different regions, with the name of the region simply 'tippex-ed out' and retyped in different region's SPDs as submitted by the then UK government? What measures has the Commission taken and will it take to promote diversity based on assessment of need by local and regional authorities and social partners within the regions affected? What role in this respect does the production of guidelines, as agreed at the informal Council in Ireland on November 1996, play? Is there a case for ending the process of producing guidelines altogether?

Answer given by Mrs Wulf-Mathies on behalf of the Commission (31 March 1998)

The Commission does not accept the criticism that the single programming documents (SPDs) agreed with the United Kingdom for the period 1994-1999 were identical for different regions. The SPDs for objective 1, 2 and 5b regions were negotiated between the Commission and the regional partnerships on the basis of individual regional plans. Inevitably, similar problems have given rise to similar responses but the detail of each programme differs significantly from region to region. For the current objective 2 period 1997-1999, each regional partnership presented radically different plans based on its own perception of local needs and potential, and the SPDs which resulted from negotiation on the basis of these plans are significantly different from the 1994-1996 documents. The Commission therefore considers the SPDs in force from 1994 onwards to be directly relevant to each of the individual regions concerned, an opinion shared by the Parliament which, during its discussion of regional policy in the United Kingdom last year, recognised that the SPDs were in general the only strategic documents in existence in the United Kingdom at the regional level.

In order to promote diversity based on assessment of need by local partnerships within eligible regions, the Commission has ensured that regional SPDs are developed on the basis of genuinely regional plans developed by the partnerships concerned. Each programme is then overseen by its own monitoring committee, which includes local authorities and other relevant economic actors at the regional level, and each monitoring committee has devised its own administrative processes and project selection criteria. In this context, the Commission welcomes the decision of the United Kingdom government to extend membership of the programme monitoring committees to social partners. The Commission attaches great importance to the regional identity of structural funds programmes and their local ownership. Where possible, the Commission encourages a bottom-up approach to the development of solutions to local economic and employment problems and in many instances the development of local strategies, e.g. for business support, is a prerequisite for aid.

The production of guidelines for the application of the structural funds is an important tool for ensuring a focus on core European issues while addressing local needs. The Commission does not agree that they should be abandoned. For instance, priorities defined by the European Council in Madrid in November 1995 were subsequently developed into the guidelines which informed the Commission's general approach to the negotiation of all objective 2 SPDs in 1996-1997. The guidelines were essential in the production of regional frameworks which match local needs to Community priorities, and each of the new programmes in the United Kingdom contains a specific chapter identifying how priorities have been taken into account in the local process.