Czech Business Today
Let’s use Cohesion Funds wisely!
Czech Ministry of Regional Development has been discussing the future strategic direction of the European subsidies with stakeholders for over a year.
By the end of August, the Czech government approved comprehensive Czech Strategy setting out five cohesion policy priorities – increasing competitiveness, core infrastructure development, enhancing performance of institutions, promoting social inclusion and sustainable development of regions. The main aim was to use European funds also for the implementation of national strategic documents such as the International Competitiveness Strategy of the CR.
In October 2011, the European Commission adopted “cohesion package” for the period 2014-2020. “Member States and the Commission have to discuss thoroughly the flexibility in allocation of money within each fund and ensure the maximum added value of investments. Europe’s strength lies in diversity and not in one-size-fits-all solution,” said Daniel Braun, Deputy Minister for Regional Development at CEBRE´s debate in Prague in December 2011.
Oldřich Vlasák, Member of the European Parliament´s Committee for Regional Development, urged for searching the best solution in the CR: “Use of funds needs to be simplified and number of operational programmes reduced”. Secretary of the Vice-president of the Confederation of Industry of the CR Jakub Vít from Arcelor Mittal Ostrava stressed that the Czech Republic was an industrial country with a significant number of large companies that pull the supply chain of hundreds of SMEs. For example – steel industry amounts only 0.3% of GDP, but the directly linked industries (especially automotive and construction) amounts up to 20% of GDP.
For the Czech industry, the main problem are too strict environmental conditions, which are often beyond the EU’s obligations and stricter than in many other Member States. “Investing €40 million into better environmental impact of heavy industry will improve the air pollution by 7%. The same investment done in cleaner transport (electro-mobility and hybrids) will improve air quality by 25%”, mentioned Vít.
