What changed between the draft committee report and the plenary report

Change 7

Added:33. Calls on the Commission and the Member States to carry out a coherent review of the TA2030 by the end of 2024, including a thorough review of its governance system, the progress made in its implementation and the relevance of its priorities, as outlined in the TA2030;

34. Welcomes the binding character of the methodology described in the Handbook of territorial and local development strategies giving territorial policies the same prominence as urban policies;

Change 8

Changed:18.35. Calls for a single framework for strategies aimed at both urban and wider territorial development, treating territorial requirements as a whole by taking as a basis unit functional areas at level 3 of the nomenclature of territorial units for statistics (NUTS);whole; stresses that this could significantly reduce bureaucratic barriers in the acquisition of funds;

Change 9

Removed:19. Calls on the Commission to increase its involvement in territorial policy through cohesion policy and to strengthen the governance of regions in order to promote cohesion and micro-cohesion by covering the particularities of each region, improving decision-making at local and regional level and applying existing tools in order to improve the management of legislative instruments;

Added:36. Calls on the Commission to ensure the proper implementation of funds and the implementation of territorial instruments, favouring efficient management without disproportionate bureaucracy; underlines the need to simplify access to funds by identifying ‘one-stop shops’ for potential beneficiaries of EU cohesion fund ITI or CLLD projects, in particular to access information about the type of financing, administrative requirements and eligibility;

Removed:20. Calls for key actors, such as the European Committee of the Regions and the European Economic and Social Committee, to have a more active role in the follow-up and further development of the TA2030;

Added:37. Recognises the European Council’s role in the development of the territorial activities of the Member States; calls on the Member States to provide for sufficient human resources for both managing authorities and implementation bodies in charge of ITIs or CLLDs, in order to ensure technical support and advisory services specifically for Local Action Groups and ITI partners and to enable compliance with the regulations;

Removed:21. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council, the Commission, and the national and regional parliaments of the Member States.

Added:38. Calls on the Commission to increase its involvement in territorial policy through cohesion policy and to strengthen the governance of regions in order to promote cohesion and micro-cohesion by covering the particularities of each region, improving decision-making at local and regional level and applying existing tools in order to improve the management of legislative instruments; calls, furthermore, on the Commission and the Member States to continue to support cohesion policy funds in order to increase the resilience of territorial development, in particular to be able to cushion the effects of unexpected events, to protect regions from suffering the consequences and to uphold the principle of ‘do no harm to cohesion’;

Added:39. Is aware of the influence of EU Semester decisions on territorial cohesion and, consequently, on the capacity to develop territorial programmes; reiterates, therefore, the need to strengthen the territorial dimension of the European Semester and to improve the correlation between cohesion policy and European economic governance, involving local and regional authorities at all stages of the procedures linked to the European Semester and the country-specific recommendations;

Added:40. Calls on the European Committee of the Regions and the European Economic and Social Committee to play a more active role in the follow-up and further development of the TA2030; calls on the Commission to conduct a study of each region’s capacity to cushion future global challenges affecting territorial cohesion; notes that this would provide a rapid response tool that would allow for flexibility in the allocation or reinforcement of resources, according to the real-time situation of the EU’s regions;

Added:41. Highlights the relevance of the territorial tools in terms of increased and inclusive participation of civil society and local and regional governments; calls on the Commission to explore new ways of raising further awareness on their rationale and of substantially increasing the use of ITIs and CLLDs, also by potentially earmarking a percentage to be used in the post-2027 cohesion policy framework;

Added:42. Calls on the European Investment Bank to increase the financial allocation envisaged for cohesion policy funds dedicated to safeguarding the balance and proper functioning of regions;

Added:43. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council, the Commission and the national and regional parliaments of the Member States.

Added:16.11.2023