The European Union's cohesion policy reform of 2013

The paper aims at highlighting and analyzing the main changes introduced into the EU cohesion policy by the reform of 2013 and assessing their implications for the new round of the cohesion policy future debate launched in the EU in 2016-2017. To this end, the social and economic context of the 2013 reform is evoked, its territorial objectives and thematic priorities are highlighted, and changes to the activities of European Structural and Investment Funds and the new mechanisms of policy implementation are analyzed. Attention is also focused on the background of the new debate on the EU budget and cohesion policy reform. The research relies on the comparative historical analysis of the stages of the cohesion policy evolution. Methods of the analysis of documents, political discourse analysis as well as the descriptive method are used. The original sources include EU regulations, documents of the European Commission, the European Parliament, the European Council, the Committee of the Regions, materials of mass media and news agencies. The author's conclusions are as follows. The reform of 2013 was the first one negotiated under the conditions of the Euro-zone crisis and austerity policies. Its main idea was linking cohesion policy with the "Europe 2020" Strategy aimed at stimulating the economic growth and increasing the global competitiveness of the European economy. Eleven thematic priorities of cohesion policy were formulated to reflect the Strategy's objectives. The reform introduced a three-tier classification of regions into more developed, transition and less developed. Different levels of co-financing from the EU Funds as well as different levels of obligations concerning the thematic concentration of resources were established for different categories of the regions. The absorption rate, i.e. the maximum percentage of allocations a country can receive from the Funds, was lowered from 4 % to 2.35 % of gross national income. A "performance reserve" was also introduced allowing the European Commission to re-distribute part of the resources in favor of development programs recognized as most successful. The author believes that a major innovation was the introduction of a number of conditions linked with the disbursement of funds, including macroeconomic indicators. Partnership Agreements between every member state and the Commission became a new basic document regulating the policy implementation. Partnership Agreements were designed to allow the Commission's reinforced control over the implementation of cohesion policy at country and regional levels. The debate on the parameters of EU cohesion policy in the 2020s began in 2016-2017 within the context of the migration crisis, the negotiations on the exit of one of the major EU donors and the conflict between the European Commission and the government of Poland, the largest beneficiary of cohesion policy. It might be argued that the donor countries would try to further implement the policies of reduced allocations and tighter disbursement conditions and would meet with the recipients' increased opposition.

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