Territorial Cohesion

We believe

★ that our objective should be to achieve  comparable living standards in all regions  of the EU. We commit ourselves to  solidarity between regions, but place a  strong emphasis on the responsibility and  accountability of the receivers of funds.

★ that the European Union should create  favourable conditions for private and public investments in all regions of Europe.  All local and regional authorities should  have, or be provided with, the necessary  technical expertise to implement public  and private investment projects. We believe that European policies need to be well  coordinated, in particular in relation to their  effects on urban areas.

★ that cooperation and interaction between  Europe’s regions and cities strengthen the foundations of the Union.

★ that the EU should have an ambitious  budget that should allow it to fulfil all its  responsibilities.

★ We are committed to the aim of a highly  performant transport network for rail, road, air and sea transport across the entire EU,  with good links between different transport  modes.

★ We want to reduce the environmental  impact of transport, including noise.

We will

➔  continue to support European cohesion policy but want to ensure that recipients have real  flexibility, but also responsibility for the spending of funds. We want to reform cohesion policy  post-2020 so that it targets economic sectors that have the potential for strong economic  growth. The use of financial instruments in cohesion policy should be increased and the awards  of grants decreased.

➔ closely follow the implementation of the European Fund for Strategic Investments and propose  adjustments in case it does not trigger additional and geographically balanced investments.  We wish to promote good practices in the area of multi-level governance of public investment  based on the OECD Principles on Effective Public Investment.

➔ push for a White Book on a European integrated urban agenda.

➔ actively support all ways of regional cooperation, such as macro-regional strategies and European  Groupings for Territorial Cooperation (EGTCs).

➔ During the mid-term review of the Multi-annual Financial Framework (MFF) and the negotiation  of the following MFF, our priority is to ensure that more commitments are foreseen for sectors that  can bring economic growth and for research. We will fight for own resources to be introduced  for the Union. On the payment side, it is of high priority that all payment delays and backlogs are  reduced. We call for all flexibility margins in the current MFF to be mobilised.

➔ The polluter-pays principle should be fully applied in a non-discriminatory manner to all modes  of transport. Market-based mechanisms should be used to reduce the environmental impact of  transport and our support for different modes of transport will be based on evidence.

➔ In order to increase the attractiveness of multi-modal journeys, multi-modal journey planners  and ticketing services are important for us. We will plead for existing passenger rights schemes to  cover also multi-modal journeys.