Slovenia satisfied with the outcome of EU Cohesion Policy 2014-2020 negotiations
Slovenia should be satisfied with the outcome of the negotiations in the field of EU Cohesion Policy for the 2014-2020 financial perspective. Namely, the key variable for defining the extent of the EU funds per region or state is its level of development. In the negotiations for the current financial perspective Slovenia’s development level was below 75 percent; today Slovenia’s development level is at 87 percent. An additional negative circumstance is that the region Zahodna Slovenija is classified as one of the more developed regions and the latter are eligible to smaller aid intensity.
In the negotiations Slovenia faced a drastically unfavourable negotiation position as the states and regions, which transfer from less developed to average developed states, are faced with the most drastic decrease of the available funds. Therefore, in the entire multiannual preparations for the negotiations Slovenia markedly underlined the necessity to continue investing the EU funds in both regions, namely Zahodna Slovenija and Vzhodna Slovenija.
We managed to introduce the logic of safety nets already in the European Commission proposal. Despite the pressures against the concept of safety nets we managed to preserve a 60 percent safety net in the final proposal. The region Zahodna Slovenija will be eligible to over 760 million Euros (in 2011 prices) or almost 860 million Euros in current prices.
During the negotiations at the EU Council Slovenia was able to focus on the position of the region of Vzhodna Slovnija with its level of development at 73 percent of the EU average. This means that it is classified as a less developed region and, in principle, eligible to greater aid intensity; however, this region also advanced in regard its development if compared to the negotiations for the current financial perspective, namely for 16 percentage points. The region Vzhodna Slovenija also faced not the best negotiation position, however Slovenia’s arguments prevailed. The region Vzhodna Slovenija will, therefore, be eligible to almost 1.12 billion Euros (in 2011 prices) or almost 1.26 billion Euros in current prices. This means that Slovenia negotiated an additional 300 million Euros for the region Vzhodna Slovenija.
Slovenia will be eligible to almost 950 million Euros (in 2011 prices) or over 1060 million Euros in current prices from the Cohesion Fund, namely for transport and environmental infrastructure and sustainable energy use.
Altogether Slovenia negotiated over 2.9 billion Euros of EU funds (in 2011 prices) or 3.3 billion Euros in current prices. In the last few months Slovenia negotiated almost half a billion Euros of additional funds which demonstrates that the negotiations were well led and firm; it also shows that it was simply not realistic to expect more in the circumstances of reducing the entire EU budget.
The available EU Cohesion Policy funds for the period 2014-2020 represent significant funds which will have to be carefully targeted to those areas with the greatest impact on development and new jobs. These areas will be defined in the process of the preparation of programming documents to make use of the EU Cohesion Policy funds; these documents will derive from Slovenia’s Development Strategy. At this stage we can say that at least 50 percent of the funds will be directly targeted at the promotion of economic development that is at the promotion of the competitiveness of small and medium-sized enterprises, promotion of research, technological development and innovations as well as the employment of youth.
