Upon the request of the Romanian Presidency of the Council of the European Union, the European Committee of the Regions prepared its position paper on “the European Semester and Cohesion Policy: aligning structural reforms with long-term investments”. This document was prepared under the leadership of ECR President Rob Jonkman (Alderman in Opsterland in the Netherlands), who is also the ECR spokesperson on economic policy and the 2nd Vice-Chair of the Economic Policy Commission of the European Committee of the Regions. The CoR is raising subsidiarity concerns with the Commission’s intention of creating synergies between the EU’s investments like the EU’s Cohesion Policy and the EU’s mechanism for coordinating economic and fiscal policies of its Member States (also known as the European Semester). While the Cohesion Policy is bottom-up treating local and regional authorities as partners, the Semester remains a top-down exercise.

The European Committee of the Regions has been a strong advocate of local and regional authorities being treated as a partner in EU policies that impact them, including the European Semester and the EU’s investment policies like the Cohesion Policy. Local and regional authorities are responsible for delivering more than half of public investments. This is one of the reasons why they are treated as partners in the delivery of the EU’s Cohesion Policy, which accounts for approximately one-third of the EU’s budget. Yet, this is not the case when it comes to the European Semester.

The European Semester provides the framework for the coordination of economic policies in the EU. It is a tool used by the Member States to discuss their economic reforms and budget plans and for the European Commission to monitor progress. Currently, the implementation of half of the European Semester’s country-specific recommendations prepared by the European Commission and the Council requires local and regional authority action. However, local and regional authorities are not formally involved in setting the recommendations.

“As the Commission tries to align investments more closely with structural reforms, as local and regional authorities we have underlined that the need to treat local and regional authorities as partners is crucial. Failure to respect our role as partners in investments like Cohesion Policy Funds as synergies are created between such investments and the Semester will create subsidiarity issues. I raised these concerns with Ms Viorica Dancila, the Prime Minister of Romania at the 6 February plenary debate. I was glad to see her agree with me on this” said Mr Jonkman.

“Cities and regions are formally recognised as partners in the delivery of EU investments through the rules governing the use of the Cohesion Funds. However, in the European Semester process, during which the investment recommendations are formulated, local and regional authorities are sometimes excluded from the process entirely or only treated as one of many stakeholders. We are proposing concrete solutions as to how this can be changed in the future EU budget”, he added.

The position paper drafted under the leadership of Mr Jonkman recommends that local and regional authorities should have a “formal, structured and permanent presence” in the European Semester and draws attention to the fact that the CoR has proposed establishing a code of conduct to this purpose.

“Side-lining local and regional authorities –the key implementing actors of country-specific recommendations –from the European Semester cannot be tolerated. The current situation risks leading to a lack of ownership of programmes and policies, inevitably leading to poor delivery”, in the words of Mr Jonkman.