Open days 06. Cutting the Red Tape Practical difficulties in actions co-financed by EU structural funds: proposals for a better management and complementariness

Open days 06. Cutting the Red Tape

Practical difficulties in actions co-financed by EU structural funds: proposals for a better

management and complementariness in period 2007-13

Jordi Amorós

Forest Technology Centre of Catalonia (CTFC)

10E10. Making management more efficient

Catalonia, the region where CTFC is located, is situated in the northeast Spain, and borders with France:

7.200.000 inhabitants

Of which:

5.100.000 in urban area

31.000 km2 of surface

Objective 2 Region (00-06)


The CTFC is situated in Spain:

45.000.000 Million inhabit.

504.000 km2 of surface

Objective 1 Regions 00-06: 9

Objective 2 Regions 00-06: 7



The CTFC is an applied research, technology transfer, training and rural areas planning centre.

• 100 staff

• 7.000.000 € of annual budget

• Situated 100 km northwest from Barcelona

• More than 50 international projects



Other European Institutions with a similar profile, at several levels, to the CTFC, may be acting in parallel:

• Projects within the framework of regional operative programmes (ERDF and ESF)• Projects within the framework of other territorial impact programmes (EAGGF- Guarantee)• Projects within the framework of communitarian initiatives (INTERREG lll, LEADER +, EQUAL or URBAN)• Projects within the framework of other instruments (SOCRATES, LdV, Vl FP, innovating actions such as art. 6 ESF)



What are the real problems of present management and application?

• The management among programmes and projects is not homogeneous (forms, terms and individual processes for each programme). An institution conducting several projects or taking part of different programmes must have not only an individual control structure for each of them (logic) but also an individual management structure and, specially, of implementation.

• It is not possible results transference to add impacts among programmes (i.e. The format to count beneficiaries in an OP of the ESF is not compatible with the format of an EQUAL-ESF project ). ¿How to know if an EQUAL beneficiary may require the support of a ROP ESF action?



• Non existence of regional transference framework of the ex-ante and interim evaluations results of the different programmes and/or projects: projects are internally improved but there is not transversal improvement.

• The complexity of the documentation to analyse and consider in each action makes difficult the dedication to complementarities and coordination with other actions (EU regulations + management guidelines + eligibility documents + applicable national guidelines + regional guidelines).



• At regional scale, responsibilities distribution among different financing and executing organisms responds frequently to political criteria, non practical for projects executors and beneficiaries (i.e. An agricultural regional ministry carries out an EAGGF- Guarantee programme; a ministry of work carries out a ESF programme; a ministry of economy is the funding organization of the ESF programme, and simultaneously executor of the ERDF programme,...).



Consequently: • The management models are not harmonized, they demand an individual effort of understanding and specialization and they do not allow what we may say institutional effectiveness (N projects, 1 model).

• And, more important as far as results, the complementariness among programmes and projects is habitually circumstantial, derived from the will of the managers and no from a cross-sectional vision from the applied instruments.

• All this affects the beneficiary, who does not perceive global planning but precise actions, which are occasionally each other coordinated.



Therefore the 3 key elements for a practical and acceptable process of harmonization would be:

1) A basic legal regulation common for projects and programmes

It is necessary to establish unique legal mechanisms for the accomplishment of projects or programmes at the states level, since European regulation (ERDF, ESF, EARDF/ EAGGF- Guarantee or other instruments) is usually common to all the instruments (i.e. Article 4).

The unification of the national legal elements that regulate the actions would allow a transversal specialization of the programmes managers in all the possibilities applicable in their territory (i.e. Regulation on the minimum number of students of ESF courses in Spanish regions).



2) A management method comparable and generic among funds.

With the objective to guarantee that managers and technicians who deal with funds and, therefore, programmes or projects, must learn only a basic system of multi fund control and management. Obviously, each programme can have specificities, not in the system of handling and management, but in its typology of activities. In this way the differences between funds and programmes would be only centred in the actions and their impact.



3) A simplification of the documentation procedures to present to the regional control authorities. Creation of regional multiprogrammes units.

At the moment, the documentation required for the management and control of the projects or programmes is complex and different among them. Unifying criteria and systems (i.e. A unique online form model for projects impact control) would allow the direct comparison of results among projects, specially in a same institution.

At regional level, the creation of programmes management central units would allow a cross-sectional vision of the programming, being able to support improvements in the development of programmes and projects to optimise its complementariness and to increase its impact.



Thank you for your attention

www.ctfc.esJordi Amorós

Director of New Markets+34 973 48 17 52

[email protected]


http://www.ctfc.es/

Documents

Open days 06. Cutting the Red Tape Practical difficulties in actions co-financed by EU structural funds: proposals for a better management and complementariness