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EU regional and urban development

Cohesion policy 2021-2027 – budget in brief

  • 01 Dec 2021
Panorama - Stories from Regional and urban policy

Analysis&Data

The EU’s budget of EUR 392 billion for Cohesion policy over the next seven years represents an investment in national and regional programmes, including those to drive growth, jobs, social integration and better cooperation.
Cohesion policy 2021-2027 – budget in brief

The allocations from the full budget fall under the following categories of programmes and funding investment goals (Chart 1).

1) Investment for jobs and growth (IJG)

  • the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF)
  • the European Social Fund+ (ESF+)
  • the Cohesion Fund
  • the Just Transition Fund (JTF).

2) Interreg: European Territorial Cooperation.

3) European Commission managed EU instruments and technical assistance.

 

 

From the EUR 392 billion budget, EUR 11.3 billion will be transferred to the Connecting Europe Facility and EUR 2.5 billion will be used for financial instruments and technical assistance to support programmes.

Direct funding of national and regional jobs and growth projects amounts to another EUR 369 billion. This funding is allocated to the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), the European Social Fund+ (ESF+), the Cohesion fund and the Just Transition Fund.

Funding under ERDF and ESF+ is provided according to whether the EU’s 240 designated regions are classified as less developed, in transition or more developed under the NUTS 2 system.

The separate ERDF and ESF+ initial allocations by fund are presented in aggregate in Chart 2.   In Chart 2 you can explore the category of region initial allocations under ERDF/ESF+ by clicking on the pie chart or by using the drill up/down menu in the top left of the chart.

 

 

Interreg initial allocations amount to EUR 9 billion. The allocations to specific Interreg programmes will be announced in Autumn 2021.

Three Commission managed instruments were allocated a total of EUR 1.2 billion out of the budget.

 

Find out more about the 2021-2027 Cohesion policy budget

Commission Implementing Decision (EU) 2021/1129 of 5 July 2021 on allocations under Just Transition Fund - OJ L 224/4, 09.07.2021.

Commission Implementing Decision (EU) 2021/1130 of 5 July 2021 on regions eligible for ERDF/ESF+ and Member States eligible for Cohesion fund - OJ L 244/10, 09.07.2021.  The list of eligible regions under Cohesion policy are found in this dataset.

Commission Implementing Decision (EU) 2021/1131 of 5 July 2021 on  allocations under cohesion policy funds and goals - OJ L 244/21, 09.07.2021. The detailed open dataset of the initial annual EU allocations underpinning the interactive charts above are available in this dataset. The initial breakdown of ERDF and ESF+ allocations under IJG is available in this dataset.