The Constitutional Treaty and Structural and Cohesion Policies

Išsami analizė 15-05-2006

The Constitutional Treaty has significantly altered the provisions relating to the structural and cohesion policies. Five areas are analysed in greater detail in this note: agriculture, culture, regional development, fisheries and transport and tourism. Following the failures of the referendums on the Constitutional Treaty in France and the Netherlands, Europe is once more facing a period of anxiety, torment and questions. In this context, various initiatives have been launched in the institutions to revitalise the project on ‘The future of Europe’. ‘Plan D’, proposed by the European Commission, thus seeks to inject more democracy into the European Union, to encourage a broad public debate and to achieve a new consensus on the future direction of the EU. The European Parliament, for its part, has adopted the report on ‘The period of reflection: the structure, subjects and context for an assessment of the debate on the European Union’. The Members of the European Parliament wanted to ensure that the new debate produced tangible results and called for the period of reflection to be extended. One of the concrete proposals in this report, concerning the convening of a Parliamentary Forum in spring 2006, came to fruition on 8 May. The objective of the parliamentarians, both national and European, was to make comprehensive recommendations to the European Council. On 10 May 2006 the Commission adopted two communications: one is entitled ‘A citizens’ agenda – Delivering results for Europe’, in which it reiterates, in particular, its aim to achieve a ‘Europe of results’ that truly meets the citizens’ needs and wishes; the other is entitled ‘The period of reflection and Plan D’, in which it draws the initial conclusions from the experience gained since the launch of the period of reflection in June 2005 and the presentation of ‘Plan D’ in October 2005. In its latest motion for a resolution on the next steps for the period of reflection, the C