INFORMAL COHESION POLICY COUNCIL : NO SMALL TASK TO PUT THEORY INTO PRACTICE.

Now that negotiations of the future cohesion policy have been wrapped up, the time has come to turn to implementing the new rules - even if they have not been formally adopted yet. This will assuredly not be an easy exercise. The ministers and senior officials in charge of EU Structural Funds met in Vilnius, Lithuania, on 26 November, to discuss it. On the agenda were the major innovations of the new rules, such as the concentration of aid on the key priorities of the Europe 2020' strategy, ex ante conditionalities that will have to be met before states can receive aid and performance requirements.

Apparently things do not seem self-evident for everyone now that these priorities have to be turned into precise commitments. For now, nearly half the member states are in good standing in terms of their partnership contract - the document that will determine the key national priorities, investment targets and expected results - meaning that they already more or less have the Commission's green light. Others are lagging, though, or trying to take certain liberties with the new European obligations. In Vilnius, Regional Policy Commissioner Johannes Hahn had to lay down the law: "This reform will have the desired positive effect only if we are serious about implementing it". Some states "have not made sufficient progress in drafting clear strategies for growth-oriented investments". To put it plainly: there are still too many...