COHESION: A JOINT COMMUNITY AND MEMBER
STATE RESPONSIBILITY
32. None of our witnesses
argued that the EU should not seek to develop and implement policies
for greater economic and social cohesion. We accept that policies
for these purposes were included in the original Treaty of Rome
and have been reiterated and elaborated ever since. The President
of the Board of Trade, Mr Lang, when asked whether the Structural
and Cohesion Funds should be abolished replied, "They are
written into the Treaty. They absorb a third of the Community's
Budget. I think they are going to continue in some shape or form
and our purpose is to make sure they continue in the way most
effective for achieving their purpose" (Q 550).
33. The Funds are seen
by different potential beneficiaries as capable of being used
for a range of their own purposes. There is a feeling among governments
that if money is available they should get as big a share of it
as they can. Mr Lang put the point when he said, "as Secretary
of State for Scotland I tried to make it my business to make sure
that Scotland got as big a slice of the cake as could legitimately
be achieved" (Q 556). Lower tiers of government are equally
eager to obtain what they see as their fair share. Asked whether
it was legitimate, for example, for the funds to be used by sub-national
level organisations as an opportunity to pursue their own alternative
policies rather than national policies Sr Arias Cañete,
Chairman of the Regional Policy Committee of the European Parliament,
replied, "In politics every motive is justified or most of
them!" He added, more seriously, that "the main objective
of the Funds should be to reduce regional disparities" and
that they should not attempt to substitute for the policies of
the Member States (Q 538).
Opinion: responsibility for
cohesion
34. We see it as
proper for the EC Institutions-and, indeed, a treaty obligation
on them-to pursue cohesion policies. It follows that we also
see it as a duty on the Community Institutions and the national
governments to fund these policies in a manner proportionate to
their importance in relation to the rest of the Budget.
35. The Member States
themselves and the Commission are in full agreement that "Member
State policies are the Union's primary instruments for achieving
cohesion."[7]
The serious questions which we consider later in this Report are
not whether Community policies by themselves are achieving economic
and social cohesion but whether they are operated so that they
add value to and complement national cohesion policies so as to
achieve results which would not otherwise be obtained. We do
not wish to see the Funds as a vehicle for replacing the policies
of the Member States; nor in practice, do we think this is a serious
danger since the CSFs or the SPDs have to be agreed[8]
between the Commission and the Member State concerned.
36. We recognise
that a good relationship between Member States and the Commission
is crucial to maximising the added value from the use of the Structural
Funds and the Cohesion Fund.
7
First Report on Economic and Social Cohesion 1996,
European Commission 1996, p.6. Back
8
See the second sentence of paragraph 24 above. Back
