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.