The European Commission welcomes the adoption of important updates to Cohesion policy 2021-2027 by the European Parliament and the Council. These changes will enable EU Member States and regions to reallocate funds towards new strategic priorities, thereby enhancing investments in competitiveness, defence, affordable and sustainable housing, water resilience, and energy transition.
Member States and regions wishing to invest in these new priorities will benefit from higher prefinancing rates – up to 20% – to help accelerate the launch and implementation of projects. Moreover, these prefinancing rates will further increase for the programmes which will reallocate at least 10% of their total value to the new priorities
Reprogrammed funds will also benefit from higher EU co-financing rates – 10 percentage points above the applicable rates – thus reducing the necessary top-up coming from national budgets. Finally, even more favourable conditions are foreseen for EU regions bordering Russia and Belarus adversely impacted by Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine.
The changes were proposed in April by the Commission following consultations with Member States. As soon as they are published in the Official Journal of the European Commission, Member States and regions will be able to make use of the new flexibilities by submitting to the Commission amendments to their Cohesion programmes.
Source: European Commission | Regional Policy | What’s new | Newsroom (https://tinyurl.com/2ptfwym5)