The 5 W’s of Cohesion Policy of European Union

One day before the European Week of Regions and Cities began, the young journalists who are part of the "Youth 4 Regions" program had a training.

The European Week of Regions and Cities is celebrated anually in Brussels, with the aim of sharing, good practices and specialized knowledge in regional and urban development with officials of regional and local administrations, experts and representatives of the academic world.

Among the activities of this first meeting, we met Francesco Molica, member of the communication team of DG Regio, the General Directorate of Regional and Urban Policy of the European Commission.

He explained in a simple way what the cohesion policy consists of following a scheme with the 5 W's:

1: Why?

2: What?

3: Where?

4: When?

5: Who?

In addition to the 5 Ws, he answered two other questions:

6: How?

7: What has the cohesion policy achieved?

I found it easy to understand. While looking for information about it, I found dozens of pages of documents. So I thought it was a good idea to make a summary about it.

Answering the questions:

1: Why? Because the EU is diverse in its unity. Regional disparities in the EU remain pronounced and affect their overall economic growth, such as unemployment.

2 What? Cohesion policy is the main investment policy of the EU.

Its objective is to reduce the disparities between the regions of the EU in order to achieve harmonious development.

The EU's cohesion policy 2014-2020 is one third of the total EU budget. The total is € 1,082 billion. 32.5%, which is 351.8 billion, is what is aimed at cohesion policy. The remaining 67.5% (730.2 billion) is for other EU policies such as agriculture and research, among others.

The Cohesion Policy has three main funds:

- European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). Whose objective is to strengthen the regional economy and social cohesion, investing in improving growth sectors to improve competitiveness and create jobs. FEDER also finances cross-border project cooperation.

- European Social Fund (ESF): invests in people, with a focus on improving employment and educational opportunities. It also aims to help disadvantaged people at risk of poverty.

- Cohesion Fund: invests in green growth, sustainable development, and improves connectivity in Member States with a GDP lower than 90% of the EU-27 average.

3. Where? Cohesion policy invests in all regions of the EU. Most go to the less developed regions.

4. When? Cohesion policy finds its origins in the Treaty of Rome. It was officially created in 1988.

5. Who? Who is involved? The European Commission, the member states, regional and local authorities, socio-economic partners and civil society.

With a shared management model, the Commission establishes the main framework, negotiates the objectives, actions, plays a supervisory role. Member states and regions manage the funds.

The collaboration process involves European, national, local, regional authorities, socio-economic actors, civil society.

6. How?

The method: programming, association and shared management. With a common strategic framework, partnership agreements, program management with a selection of projects, monitoring and annual reports.

7: What has the cohesion policy achieved?

- In the period 2007-2013 the cohesion policy has achieved:

- 1.3 million jobs created - at least 1/3 in SMEs.

- 356,000 SMEs supported.

- 8,000 km of new or reconstructed railways.

- 47,000 km of new or reconstructed roads.

- Broadband for 20 million citizens.

- Access to drinking water for 15 million citizens.

- ESF: 15 million participants per year.

- 141,145 new companies were supported

Two of the examples of successful financing, which they taught us, were:

- Peace program in Northern Ireland.