{"id":423207,"date":"2025-04-01T19:41:34","date_gmt":"2025-04-01T17:41:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/2025\/04\/01\/fitto-coesione-revisione-medio-termine\/"},"modified":"2025-04-01T20:07:44","modified_gmt":"2025-04-01T18:07:44","slug":"cohesion-defence-chapter-enters-mid-term-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2025\/04\/01\/cohesion-defence-chapter-enters-mid-term-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Cohesion, defence chapter enters mid-term review"},"content":{"rendered":"

From the correspondent\u00a0in Strasbourg – The EU is trying to breathe new life into its cohesion policy<\/strong>, the main expenditure chapter of the EU budget<\/strong> earmarked for regional development, which in the current programming period (2021\u20132027)<\/strong> is worth more than \u20ac390 billion<\/strong>. It does so by incentivising member states to reprogram the use of European funds<\/strong>, shifting them to the Union’s new priorities in the changed global geopolitical environment<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Five priorities were outlined today (April 1) by\u00a0Raffaele Fitto<\/strong>, executive vice president of the Commission with responsibility for Cohesion and Reform, for the\u00a0mid-term review<\/strong>\u00a0of the\u00a0EU cohesion policy<\/strong>:\u00a0competitiveness<\/strong>,\u00a0defence<\/strong>\u00a0(with special attention to\u00a0regions along the eastern border<\/strong>),\u00a0housing<\/strong>,\u00a0water resilience<\/strong>, and\u00a0energy transition<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Speaking from the EU Parliament plenary in Strasbourg, the Melonian commissioner stressed that “the current programs were discussed between 2019 and 2022, the partnership agreement was signed in 2022, and implementation is starting now,” but that “since then,\u00a0the world has changed significantly<\/strong>” and the strategic objectives of EU spending need to be reviewed. The legislative proposal will now have to be discussed and approved by the community co-legislators, Parliament and Council.<\/p>\n

The Berlaymont claims that the plan is quite generous. Projects linked to the five priorities will enjoy pre-financing rates of 30 per cent<\/strong>\u00a0in 2026 and co-financing of up to 100 per cent<\/strong>\u00a0from Brussels.\u00a0If the redirected resources exceed\u00a015 per cent of the total amount<\/strong>\u00a0allocated to the programs in question, the EU will put an\u00a0additional 4.5 per cent prefinancing<\/strong>\u00a0on the table (which becomes\u00a09.5 per cent in the case of eastern regions<\/strong>).<\/span>\u00a0National governments should identify by June the projects in their respective NRRPs that are in danger of not being completed by their natural deadline in August 2026 and consider reallocating unused funds<\/strong> to the above priorities.<\/p>\n

Specifically, as far as the defence sector<\/strong> is concerned\u2014around which the controversy had centred, both at the European and Italian levels\u2014the creation of two dedicated objectives within as many instruments, namely the European Regional Development Fund<\/strong> (ERDF) and the Just Transition Fund<\/strong> (JTF), is envisaged. On the one hand, shifting resources currently dedicated to jobs and growth to defence<\/strong>\u00a0productive capacity building<\/strong>; on the other hand, supporting the construction of strategic dual-use infrastructure<\/strong>, military and civilian. The Commission will\u00a0also submit a legislative proposal to include defence among the “strategic sectors” identified by the\u00a0Step Platform<\/strong>, which are\u00a0<\/span>dedicated to clean technologies.<\/p>\n

\n

Today the #Commissione<\/a> approved the proposal for the modernization of cohesion policy.
\nFive new priorities: competitiveness, defense, water management, energy efficiency, housing policies to meet the diverse needs of European regions. From the regions… pic.twitter.com\/bBkMsfZleA<\/a><\/p>\n

– Raffaele Fitto (@RaffaeleFitto) April 1, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Brussels urges the Twenty-Seven\u00a0also to double the funds for\u00a0affordable housing<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0(from 7.5 billion to 15 billion) and increase those for water resilience<\/strong> (currently amounting to 13 billion) to address drought challenges and those caused by floods and extreme weather events. As for energy transition<\/strong>, projects related to the construction of so-called interconnectors and related transmission systems, as well as recharging infrastructure, may be financed with cohesion funds.<\/p>\n

All this, Fitto tirelessly repeated, will happen in any case on a voluntary basis<\/strong> and will respect “the specific needs of the territories<\/strong>.” It will be up to the chancelleries to decide independently whether to make use of the flexibility offered to them by Brussels according to the challenges their regions face. Still, they will not be forced to revise their cohesion plans. Moreover, he remarked\u00a0that\u00a0there would be no “pseudo-centralisation of cohesion funds,<\/strong><\/span>“<\/strong> as some press rumours had anticipated in recent months.<\/p>\n

Reactions were quick to come, and they were far from unanimous. The chair of the Committee of the Regions, Kata T\u00fctt\u0151<\/strong>, received positively<\/a> the fact that Fitto “listened to local and regional leaders,” who had called for “flexible tools<\/strong>” to invest in “affordable housing, water resilience, energy security, and local preparedness in times of crisis, including defence and all dimensions of security.”<\/p>\n

Less enthusiastic Valentina Palmisano<\/strong>, an M5S MEP who sits on the REGI committee: the revision proposed by Fitto “smells like a rip-off<\/strong> because, among other things, on military mobility, there is 100 per cent EU funding, while on other spending chapters, such as schools, health and labour, national co-financing remains.” It would be, she says, a matter of turning cohesion funds “into a tool to serve the defence industry and the militarization of the European economy<\/strong>,” a move she brands as “masochistic.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fitto presented a list of strategic priorities for the second part of the EU budget period, to align with which member states will be able to reallocate unused funds while gaining greater flexibility (and support from Brussels)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7876,"featured_media":423199,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[25681],"tags":[26958,30892,29707],"class_list":["post-423207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-review-political-cohesion-en","tag-raffaele-fitto-en-9"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7876"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=423207"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423207\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":423215,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423207\/revisions\/423215"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/423199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=423207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=423207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=423207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}