STRUCTURAL FUNDS : BAN ON FINANCING HOUSING' EXPENSES FOR EU15 COULD BE RELAXED.

Good news for the 15 old' EU member states: some of their energy investments in housing could soon become eligible for funding from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). They are currently banned. But negotiations are underway with DG Region to relax the strict interpretation of the ERDF Regulation (1080/2006) which holds, in Article 7, that housing expenses are only eligible in new member states.

The idea would be to modify the implementing Regulation for Structural Funds (1828/2006), through the comitology procedure, to re-qualify expenditure for energy efficiency and the use of renewable energy in housing as energy expenses, and no longer consider them as housing expenses. As a result, all EU member states could be eligible to present energy measures for buildings to ERDF.

At the root of this dispute is the Social Union for the Habitat, a French association particularly active in the field of housing, which is collaborating in the work of the European Parliament's urban housing inter-group study. Laurent Ghekiere, its representative in Brussels, explained to Europolitics Social that the European Commission was "a priori in agreement on the principle" - which a letter from Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso to the President of the Committee of the Regions, Michel Delebarre, seems to confirm. Dated 30 January 2008, it states the Commission's...