The next “Friends of Cohesion” conference will be held next year in Croatia.
As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 18th of September, 2018, the Minister of Regional Development and European Union Funds, Gabrijela Žalac, participated in the Budapest-based “Friends of Cohesion” conference, in which key issues related to cohesion policies and the proposal of the European Commission’s multiannual financial framework for the period after the year 2020 were discussed.
Minister Žalac, in her presentation, presented the position of the Republic of Croatia on innovative solutions and good practices that contributed to the implementation of projects funded by European Union funds, and also reminded of the extraordinary importance of the preserving cohesion policy in the context of reducing the development disparities across EU regions, reducing the overall budget, and the importance of the cohesion policy for Croatian citizens, for public investment, for fiscal stability, and ultimately for economic growth and for further job creation.
The conference was also an opportunity to meeting with Commissioner for Budget and Human Resources, Günther Oettinger, and the Hungarian Minister of Innovation and Technology, László Palkovics, with whom Minister Žalac exchanged opinions on the new financial period.
To recall, the European Commission announced a proposal for a legislative package for the cohesion policy for the period after 2020.
According to the announcements, GDP per capita has remained the main criterion for the allocation of funds for the policy, and the Republic of Croatia (for the period of 2021-2027) was allocated 9.89 billion euro, an increase of 8.6 percent when compared to the current financial period 2014-2020.
When we look at constant prices, the Republic of Croatia would have reduced the allocation by about 5.6% in the next EU budget period 2021-2027. The announced major cuts for Cohesion policy, however, did not largely affect the allocation of funds to Croatia.
As mentioned, the next “Friends of Cohesion” conference will be held next year in the Republic of Croatia, and the topic will be that of integrated territorial investment.
