Opinion of the Legal Service on Eligibility to the European territorial cooperation objective under cohesion policy 2007-2013

The Legal Service considers that the absence of such a region from the list drawn up under Article 7(1) does not preclude the liberated funds being used for external crossborder co-operation in that region. It takes that view that even though that region would not feature in the Article 7(1) list, the legislator cannot have intended to compel Member State to channel such ring-fenced money away from regions that would have been covered under ENPI or IPAA but do not feature on that list. That result would be against both the wording and the structure of the provisions in question.