Cohesion Policy

The manipulation of a tender for a metro line extension in Prague - financially supported via EU funds and the European Investment Bank (EIB) has not only resulted in a huge EU funds fine, but also raises questions about the EIB's ability to identify and avoid mismanagement in the infrastructure projects it finances.

Cohesion Policy decisions are heating up at national level while financial allocations for the period 2014-2020 have been published this week.

With today’s approval of the watered down proposals to reform EU Structural Funds in the European Parliament’s committee for regional development (see our press release), EU decision makers have taken a step away from ambitious environmental spending in the future Cohesion Policy. At the same time also national level allocation of the 2014-2020 funds is starting to take shape. But efforts to get the funds working sustainably for, and on behalf of, needy local communities are being thwarted in Slovakia - for a range of all too familiar reasons.

So far the planning for Latvia’s use of the EU funds for the 2014-2020 period has been a reasonably positive experience from a partnership perspective. Yet the process that has, until recently, been notable for its transparency and high level of public participation is now in danger of being derailed.

Croatia's new Law on Strategic Investments does not bode well for the sustainable use of EU funds in Croatia now that the country has become an EU member state.

While the EU's future common agricultural policy is taking shape in Brussels, it’s not just there that major agri-business interests are flexing their muscles to take the ‘green-ness’ out of EU agricultural spending.