Regional Policy - Inforegio

Commissioner Samecki and Brice Hortefeux, Minister of the Interior, Overseas France and Territorial Communities, signed an agreement on 13 November triggering the release of 109.4 million euro for France in the wake of the devastation caused by storm Klaus in January 2009. The aid, targeting regions in the south-west, comes from the European Union Solidarity Fund (EUSF) and will cover government costs incurred during emergency relief operations.

The European Investment Fund (EIF) has launched a call for expression of interest aimed at non-bank micro-credit providers/micro-finance institutions (MFIs). This is in the framework of a joint action between the European Commission and the European Investment Bank (EIB) Group to support the development of micro-credit in the European Union (JASMINE). The deadline for sending applications to the EIF is 11 December 2009.

The European Union’s Court of Auditors has just released its annual report in which it recognises improvements in how the European budget is being managed overall. However, it points out that for Cohesion Policy, the amount of errors (11%) in payment requests made by Member States, which can lead to unwarranted transfers from the Community budget, remains too high. February 2008 saw the Commission launch an action plan to remedy this situation.

To commemorate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, we publish a video presenting some projects co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) in the eastern regions of Germany.

Do you think evaluation methods are boring or technical? This conference aims to prove that evaluation methods are crucial to public policy making and particularly important in European cohesion policy. Letting the public know how taxpayers' money has been spent is a basis of democratic accountability. How do we know that our programmes work? Do we know why? How can we make them work better? This conference will disseminate good practice and debate methodological questions which have been exercising the evaluation and policy community in recent years. Programme and registration here

The Lisbon Monitoring Platform of the Committee of the Regions (CoR) has launched an online survey on "The European Economic Recovery Plan in Regions and Cities: One Year On". The aim of the survey is to assess the impact of the economic and financial crisis at local/regional level. It will also provide a first evaluation of measures taken by local and regional authorities to tackle the downturn, within the context of the European Economic Recovery Plan. All EU regions and cities are invited to participate in this survey (deadline: 30 November 2009).

The construction of the second desalination plant in Alicante (Spain) was undertaken in response to the need to increase the region's own water resources. This new plant entered into service at the beginning of 2009. Producing an average of 65.000m3 of drinking water everyday, it serves a population of 355.000.

The results of the ex post evaluation of cohesion policy management and implementation systems for the period 2000-2006 are now available. The report focused in the main on the EU10 (i.e. those Member States which joined the Union in 2004) for which individual National Reports were drafted. Analysis for the EU15 concentrates more on spill-over effects of cohesion policy on domestic administrative practices. The evaluation also looks at the extent to which sustainable development priorities were integrated. All final deliverables, main conclusions and recommendations are now available here