„Czechia became richer and so the responsibilities are bigger, “commented Joseph Schwarz, from DG Regio, on the new cohesion policy framework for the programming period of 2021-2027. During the current period Czechia´s economy has grown strongly as in 2018 the GDP expanded by 3 percent according to data from the European Commission.
European Union´s cohesion policy aims to help weaker economies and less developed regions among the EU member states by various funds. Czechia got in current programming period almost 24 billion euros from the European Structural and Investment Funds. In the next period it is expected that Czechia will get less money than in the current one because most of it´s regions got richer. Although it is still a big amount of money compared to other member states, it is 20 percent less than before and the trend will continue in next periods as the GDP per capita in Czechia is higher every year.
Joseph Schwarz and Petr Votoupal are Programme managers in European Commission originally from Czechia. On Wednesday during the EU Week of Regions they were presenting 2021-2027 Cohesion Policy legislative proposals to delegates from Czech regions. The main priorities of new cohesion policy set by Head of Commission Ursula von der Leyen are to create greener and smarter Europe by investing mainly in innovation and environmental projects. The plan is that 75 percent of all funding should be invested in such projects which may be a challenge for Czechia. „I think there will not be as many projects on those two topics and it would be difficult to use all the subsidies,“ expressed Schwarz his concern.
2021 – 2027: Czechia more competitive
Another challenge for the country is that the European Commission is planning to change the proportion of co-financing of the projects. From the current situation when, depending on the level of regional´s wealth, the funds are covering 85 to 55 percent of financing, it will change to 70 to 40 percent. Therefore, this means that Czechia needs to find more money for the projects at national level. That could be a problem for other countries and regions that are less developed but at the same time the Commission puts an emphasis on them. „It will be a challenge for the Czech regions to find money for co-financing the projects,“ said Joseph Schwarz.
The new cohesion policy framework also suggest that the Commission will distribute more money from centrally managed funds, which means that member states will have less direct money and will have to succeed in competition between projects from other countries. Until today, Czechia was not very strong at doing so. Therefore, the authorities seesthat as a problem and claim to work towards changing that.
From the discussions it is obvious that with new cohesion policy framework Czechia will deal with new challenges and will need to start to use the money from EU funds more effectively. It is also a necessary condition if Czechia wants to enhance its competitiveness among other members of the EU.
Written by: Karolína Šimková (Czechia)
Edited by: Iskra Tsankova (Bulgaria)
