Monitoring and evaluation are clearly lacking in the EU's regional policy, says Romanian MEP Ramona Mănescu. Talks on the future of the policy will start soon.

Interview: Regional policy needs to be revised

https://api.multimedia.europarl.europa.eu/documents/20125/15654331/N003-0125-EN.srt

Ms Mănescu, hello.  Over 80% of the Cohesion Fund budget

is allocated to the poorest countries today.

This is meant to boost the economy,  to develop infrastructure.

What is your impression today?  Is this the right way to go?

It's OK to give priority to those regions  which are the poorest regions in Europe

with GDP per capita  at under 75% of the EU average.

It's OK to still give money  to the wealthiest regions of Europe

But it would be a good thing  to consider

those regions in between  75 and 90% of GDP,

and to give them the chance  to develop more in the future

and to use all the resources that the other  two sets of regions are already using.

Would you say that the countries  that already receive something

should continue to do so?  Particularly the regions.

Exactly. If we really want to eliminate  these disparities between the regions,

Of course, we should have a limit  and we should have conditions,

when we are saying, "Yes, we will create  the intermediate category."

But, of course, we need  some limits in time at least.

For a country like Romania,  many projects are difficult to co-finance.

It's hard for Romania to provide  the first part of the money.

should secure the co-financing part  in their national budgets.

That should be a condition  for all governments.

If we talk about  the Romanian government,

The Romanian government didn't secure  this budget for the co-financing part.

That's why Romania will most probably  lose a huge part of their funds.

But this is not the only reason  why they are losing funds.

What are the other ones?  -It's administrative incapacity

and problems or difficulties  within the system.

When you see the Commission's plans,  where would you say is the real problem?

We're expecting from them  more responsibilities,

even concerning controlling  and monitoring the Member States

and evaluating  the Member States correctly.

We don't yet have a clear evaluation  for this programming period, 2007-2013.

So we don't know  how we will approach the next period.

So that means  we're spending millions of euros

without knowing exactly  what the impact is?

Yes. We are developing infrastructure,  we are spending money,

but we need, let's say,  to be more accurate

This is the Commission's responsibility,  which they haven't yet taken up.

Would it in a way be better  to have 100% of the financing

coming from Brussels directly  to develop something in a country?

No, I think it's fair enough  for Member States to contribute also.

In this way you engage Member States  and motivate them

to get those programmes  correctly implemented.

If you just give them 100% of the money  from Brussels

I believe we will have  more problems than we do now.

Do you want to keep the money  or do you want more money?

We want to keep the money,  just to be very pragmatic and realistic.

If we say we want more money,  that isn't realistic.

So let's try to be realistic  at least in these negotiations.