Regulation on European Territorial Cooperation

Regulation on European Territorial Cooperation

Key points:

 

The EESC also supports the trend towards thematically focused intervention and investment priorities within each cooperation component, although it is important to take into account the specificities and needs of individual countries and regions.

The EESC welcomes and supports the attempt to simplify the rules at all the levels involved: beneficiaries, programme authorities, participating Member States and third countries, as well as the Commission.

The EESC particularly welcomes the unification of managing and certifying authorities, the simplification of the declaration of costs, electronic reporting and the production of annual reports in 2017 and 2019 only.

The establishment of common indicators (set out in the annex to the regulation) for evaluating the concrete outputs of individual programmes is also a significant element, enabling a better assessment of the results and effectiveness of particular structural interventions.

The involvement of civil society stakeholders is also important in smaller projects, which have the potential to increase the added value of intervention, particularly in relation to cross-border cooperation.