As the debate on the future of Cohesion policy after 2020 intensifies, a key area for reform is the approach to shared management.
There is increasing recognition of the need for a fundamental change that goes beyond simplification of rules and recognises differences in institutional and administrative structures and capacities across Member States. Countries receiving relatively small amounts of EU funding – relative to domestic economic development spending – are finding that the costs and complexity of administration of European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF) are in danger of outweighing the benefits of support.
The challenge is how to engineer a system that makes a real difference to administration as well as the indicators and thresholds used to determine the Member States (or programmes) that would have (lighter) regulatory requirements.
A new EPRC paper by John Bachtler, Carlos Mendez and Stephen Miller paper examines the possible indicators that could be used for determining differentiation and which Member States might benefit.
