European Union

The EU’s cohesion policy is 30 years old and now accounts for around a third of the EU’s budget. To celebrate, the European Commission has published a new dataset. This details annual payments to the EU’s regions since 1989.

The dataset covers most funds under the European Structural and Investment Funds umbrella. For the UK this covers the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), the European Social Fund (ESF) and the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD). This means some big areas of EU spending (such as payments made via the Common Agricultural Policy) aren’t included. The dataset also doesn’t include the territorial co-operation element of ERDF, such as Interreg.

This aside, it provides some interesting insights into how the EU has invested in the UK since 1989.

Between 1989 and 2016 the UK received a total of €37.4 billion from the three funds. There’s sometimes a popular assumption that the lion share of EU regional spending has been focused on central and eastern Europe, but over the long term the UK has done relatively well. The amount spent in the UK since 1989 is well above the EU-28 average of €28 billion.

This partly reflects that the UK has been a member state for a long time and so has been able to benefit from EU funds over a longer period. But it’s also important to remember that the UK pushed hard for EU regional policy to be adopted in the first place, mainly because many of its deindustrialising regions would be key beneficiaries.

The UK benefited most from the 2000-2007 programming period, which saw €16 billion worth of investment. Spending reached a peak in 2005. It then fell from the 2007-2013 programming period as funding shifted its focus to central and eastern Europe.

In terms of where EU money has been spent in the UK, West Wales and the Valleys have benefited the most. Merseyside, Northern Ireland, South West Scotland, South Yorkshire and the West Midlands have also seen high levels of investment. But something worth noting is that every area in the UK has benefited to some extent – EU investment has not just been the preserve of areas in industrial decline.

In the context of Brexit all of this leads to an obvious question: what will happen to this investment after the UK leaves the EU? The amounts spent are not insignificant. As austerity bites, localities have also become increasingly reliant on EU funding schemes to deliver projects.

During the 2017 general election the Conservative Party manifesto committed to establishing a “Shared Prosperity Fund” which would replace EU regional investment after Brexit. But there’s been little progress and clarity on this since the election. While the EU is preparing its proposals for the next cohesion policy programme from 2021, the UK has only got as far as guaranteeing to underwrite EU projects up to the end of 2020. For this reason, UK local authorities – the primary beneficiaries of EU regional funding – are starting to worry.

There are plenty of debates about how effective EU regional spending has been. But overall UK regions have seen sizeable investment from the EU, which the LGA says has been used to “create jobs, support small and medium enterprises, deliver skills training, invest in critical transport and digital infrastructure and boost inclusive growth”. The extent to which this support will continue after Brexit remains uncertain.

The post Exploring EU regional investment in the UK since 1989 appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

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Recommendation to the Council, the Commission, and the EEAS on Libya
Recommendation to the Council, Commission and the Vice-President of the Commission / High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy on the negotiations on the modernisation of the EU-Chile Association Agreement
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The next AFET meetings are scheduled to take place on:

Wednesday, 16 May 2018, 09:00-12:30 and 14:30-18:30, room JAN 2Q2
Thursday, 17 May 2018, 09:00-12:30, room JAN 2Q2

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will take place on 15 May, 9:00-12:30 and 14:30-18:30 in Brussels.

Organisations or interest groups who wish to apply for access to the European Parliament will find the relevant information below.

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watch the meeting live
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President Donald Tusk receives the Polonicus Award on 28 April 2018 in Aachen.

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The informal meeting of EU ministers of finance and economy to be held on 27 and 28 April at the National Palace of Culture in Sofia, Bulgaria. Ministers of finance and economy and the central bankers of the EU discuss the convergence policy inside and outside the Euro area, as well as the further reduction of fragmentation within the Capital Markets Union. The second day of the meeting is devoted to improving revenue collection and fighting tax fraud in the single market, as well as to corporate taxation and the taxation of the digital economy.

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AMENDMENTS 1 - 138 - Draft report Partnership and Cooperation Agreement between the EU and Iraq
Committee on Foreign Affairs

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Remarks by M. Centeno following the Eurogroup meeting of 27 April 2018 on Greece, banking union and wage dynamics.

During his last stop of his Western Balkan's tour, President Donald Tusk met Prime Minister of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia Zoran Zaev. The main topic of the discussions was the preparation of the upcoming Sofia summit.

The Council adopted revised rules on the funding of European political parties and foundations.

In Sarajevo, President Tusk met Bakir Izetbegović, Mladen Ivanić and Dragan Čović, members of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and discussed the state of play of preparation of the EU-Western Balkans summit in Sofia.

As part of his tour of the Western Balkans, President Tusk visited Pristina and met President Thaçi to prepare the summit in Sofia.

The Council extends and strengthens arms embargo, and adopts a framework for restrictive measures against officials responsible for human rights violations in Myanmar / Burma.

The co-chairs of the Brussels II Conference on 'Supporting the future of Syria and the region', the European Union and the United Nations, issued a declaration.

During his visit to Serbia, President Tusk met President Aleksandar Vučić to discuss the preparation of the EU-Western Balkans Summit in Sofia and the strong bilateral relations between the EU and Serbia.

EU ambassadors confirmed an agreement reached between the Council Presidency and the European Parliament representatives on ETIAS.

At the first stop of his visit to the Western Balkans, President Donald Tusk met in Tirana Prime Minister Edi Rama.

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The leaders of North and South Korea greeted each other warmly at the start of their summit on the border between their two countries. By attending the summit Kim Jong-un has become the first North Korean leader to enter South Korea since the armistice put an end to hostilities in 1953. Commentators discuss how this symbolic gesture can help to resolve the permanent crisis on the peninsula.