Meeting of the Committee on Regional Development (REGI) in the EP in Brussels on the Common Provisions Regulation as regards specific measures for Greece. Statements by Corina CRETU, Member of the EC in charge of Regional Policy, Lambert van NISTELROOIJ (EPP, NL), Constanze Angela KREHL (S&amp;D, DE), Notis MARIAS (ECR, BE), Ivan JAKOVCIC (ALDE, HR) and Younous OMARJEE (GUE/NGL, FR)

EU - Greece (T)

meeting

MARIAS, Notis (ECR, EL)

economic situation in Greece (T)

CREȚU, Corina (S&D, RO)

OMARJEE, Younous (The Left, FR)

Committee on Regional Development

van NISTELROOIJ, Lambert (EPP, NL)

KREHL, Constanze (S&D, DE)

JAKOVČIĆ, Ivan (ALDE, HR)

Common Provisions Regulation as regards specific measures for Greece: extracts from the exchange of views with Corina CREŢU, Member of the EC in charge of Regional Policy - EP Committee on Regional Development

SOUNDBITE (English), Corina CRETU, Member of the EC in charge of Regional Policy, The Commission has stood by Greece throughout the crises with both financial support and technical assistance. We adopted as you know the last 15 July a communication, a new start for jobs and growth in Greece, as a follow up to the Euro summit of 12 July.

SOUNDBITE (English), Corina CRETU, Member of the EC in charge of Regional Policy, Reforms will enable Greece to access 86 billion euro of loans for the next 3 years. Over time that will create a better investment in business climax that will grow investment in private sector, and those contribute to the sustainability of the Greek economy. However these reforms are necessary but not sufficient. They must absolutely be coupled with massive investments in the Greek economy.

SOUNDBITE (English), Corina CRETU, Member of the EC in charge of Regional Policy, For the 2014-2020 period, the Commission proposes to increase the rate of the initial pre-financing in Greece by 7%. For the ERBF the cohesion founds and ISF. But also for the European maritime and fisheries fund. This extra pre-financing will met an additional 1 billion euro available over two years, 500 million euro in each of these years 2015 and 2016. This will make it possible to launch more projects and more quickly.

SOUNDBITE (English), Lambert van NISTELROOIJ (EPP, NL), Several of my members have said that: we want to have the right to make amendments, and not to say easily like that. We want amendments.

SOUNDBITE (German), Constanze Angela KREHL (S&amp;D, DE), In this extraordinary situation we have to use extraordinary measures, and introduce a simple fast financing procedure.

SOUNDBITE (Greek), Notis MARIAS (ECR, BE), All the member states have the right to get money from the structural funds, no state, above from Greece have had that link to the implementation of the memorandum programme. So that's an other violation, that's another error.

SOUNDBITE (Croatian), Ivan JAKOV&#268;I&#262; (ALDE, HR), In this specific case we have the possibility to reach a specific decision, and we are ready to support it , because once more we will like to simplify the procedures to do it, without amendments. We expect all the other groups to do the same and to sow solidarity.

SOUNDBITE (French), Younous OMARJEE (GUE/NGL, FR), In the situation of Greece today it will hardly be to the credit of the EU if 2 billion euro will be lost , so we have to create conditions to tot use them properly.