Cohesion Policy Friends Group reunited in Bucharest

In Bucharest, on Friday there was reunited Cohesion Policy Friends Group -a group of European countries that have a common position on the negotiations regarding the European budget for the period 2014-2020.

Cohesion policy aims at maintaining the policies by which the funds are allocated to less developed countries in order to reach the average level of development of the European Union.

The negotiations with the net contributing States to the budget of the Union are tough, because they demanded a substantial reduction of the budget.

On the other hand, there are member states, including Romania and Poland, that support significant allocations, not only at the level of the budget as a whole, but in particular cohesion policy.

Romania supports, inter alia, not to do a link between the absorption rate and future allocations.

On Friday, the 15 high-ranking officials from the Friends of Cohesion Policy Group signed in Bucharest a joint statement in which they insist on the maintaining of an adequate level of funding for the purpose of economic growth and the creation of new jobs in the European Union.

The joint statement that the representatives of the 15 states have done on Friday, in Bucharest, insist to maintain an adequate level of funding for economic growth and to create jobs.

"We believe that it is important to improve the way of spending resources. However", emphasizes the Cohesion Policy Friends Group "a rational spending must not be used as an excuse for further reductions of the cohesion funds", are described in the document signed on Friday.

Romania will receive "a larger sum for common agricultural policy"

At the end of the meeting, the Prime Minister Victor Ponta declared that the high-level meeting was a success.

On the other hand, Victor Ponta paid attention that the issue of Romania is not the reduction of European funds, but our lack of absorption capacity and he specified that Romania is on the last position in terms of attracting funds, according to data provided by European officials.

"The problem of Romania is not to reduce funds, in the first place, but our lack of absorption capacity of these funds. I say it without any kind of joy, obviously. We are on the last place-that was the situation that President Barroso presented me today and, frankly, the question is: Do we want funds but can we spend them? Can we absorb them? Or that relates to a fundamental change in terms of institutional and administrative capacity of Romania", said Victor Ponta.

The Prime Minister also declared that Romania will receive, according to the proposals, a larger sum for the common agricultural policy in the new draft budget of the EU.

In turn, the Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk argued that Friday the European officials have developed a strategy to promote the cohesion policy development of the EU, but that preserves a financial discipline.

"This initiative is good not only for Romania, but also for all the EU countries, since we picked up today a strategy for the promotion of cohesion policy, and this means that we have developed a strategy for growth in the EU, while maintaining financial discipline", said Donald Tusk.

The reunion was an opportunity for Victor Ponta to have, in the morning, several bilateral meetings, less with his Hungarian counterpart, Viktor Orban, that has sparked a wave of questions.

Victor Ponta commented at the news conference that it was not scheduled such a meeting, having in view the importance of the meeting, but that he will discuss, at the earliest opportunity, with Prime Minister Orban about the problems in the Hungarian-Romanian dispute.


Translated by Anamaria Petrache
MTTLC, Bucharest University