THE EUROPEAN COMMITTEE OF THE REGIONS (CoR)
- welcomes the proposal’s objective of introducing greater simplification, transparency and harmonisation in the monitoring and execution of the EU budget; notes that the CoR has repeatedly supported this direction in various opinions; underlines that this should not come at the expense of multilevel governance, subsidiarity, the partnership principle and the Treaty objective of territorial cohesion;
- calls for the introduction of an additional horizontal principle ‘do no harm to cohesion’, which, in accordance with previous opinions of the CoR, shall provide a systematic safeguard to ensure that EU funding programmes do not generate negative territorial impacts;
- emphasises that, as highlighted in European Court of Auditors reports on the Recovery and Resilience Facility and cohesion policy, applying a performance-budgeting approach without adequate guidance and support does not guarantee greater efficiency or impact and may even encourage irregular or risk-averse behaviour that harms regional development, innovation and the impact of European Funds;
- is of the view that the shift to a full performance-based approach entails substantial changes in the management and evaluation systems of the funds and demands a transition period, during which the relevant provisions of the performance framework shall not apply, to allow Member States and managing authorities that so request sufficient time to adapt;
- believes that, in accordance with Regulation (EU, Euratom) 2024/2509, the gateway should provide aggregated and user-friendly data about the territorial concentration (by NUTS 2) of all the different funding instruments, including shared, direct and indirect management.
