Adoption of programmes for 2014-2020!

After the vote of the 2014 budget, on November 20th and 21st 2013, the European Parliament adopted numerous programmes for the next 2014-2020 programming period.

Thus, the Members of the European Parliament adopted the new cohesion policy with a 325 billion euro budget. Funding procedures have been simplified and the objectives and priorities have been aligned with the Europe 2020 strategy ones. Moreover, financing equity was revised to allow a better and fairer granting to regions. In addition to the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), the Cohesion Fund and the European Globalization Adjustment Fund (EGF), which are the components of the Cohesion Policy, the European Social Fund (ESF) will represent almost 23.1% of this policy global budget. The emphasis will be on fight against youth unemployment.

SMEs have been at the heart of the adoptions concerns. The Horizon 2020 was adopted with a budget of 70.2 billion euro and with an objective of supporting SMEs (with at least 11% of the budget), to attract more actors in sciences and increase the number of scientists participating to the programme. Horizon 2020 is made of three priorities: excellent science, industrial leadership and societal challenges. Member states should formally adopt the programme by 2014.
COSME programme also supports SMEs with a budget of 2.03 billion euro and a part of it will be allocated to funding through risk-capital or loan guarantee. Helping national authorities to facilitate procedures and improving access to the market for SMEs are important priorities of this programme.
Finally, SMEs will be supported both in their creation and development through COSME programme.

About environment, the European Parliament adopted the LIFE programme. It supports projects with environmental and climate action, for a 3.1 billion euro budget for 2014-2020 (the budget was of 2.2 billion euro for 2007-2013). Projects will be selected according to their potential and the integration of environmental and climate questions as well as solutions in the fields of water, waste, air quality and nature protection.

Previously, other programmes were adopted by the European Parliament. Among them, MEPs voted ERASMUS+. With a total budget of 14.7 billion euro, grants will be provided to students, teachers, trainers and apprentices, in order to allow them to go study or teach abroad in one of the EU Member States. It gathers the previous programmes Comenius, Erasmus, Erasmus Mundus, Leonardo da Vinci and Grundtvig and aims to improve, partnerships between institutions and companies to develop a better training and other work and teaching approaches.

What is more, the Creative Europe programme was also adopted at the beginning of last week. Artworks’ and artists’ mobility as well as the audiovisual sector to the digital era will be supported by a budget of 1.46 billion euro. 2007-2013 MEDIA, MEDIA Mundus and Culture programmes are gathered in one framework programme divided into two sub-programmes: Media and Culture. A loan guarantee scheme to help micro companies and SMEs in cultural and creative sectors was adopted to better develop their activities.

Finally, the new Connecting Europe Facility was adopted by MEPs. A budget of almost 29.3 billion euro will be at its disposal to achieve the completion of the trans-European transport, energy and telecommunications Networks. Financial instruments will be used. In the same field, European Parliament also approved the guidelines for the development of the trans-European transport network (ETR-T). It deals with the creation of an efficient “road-rail-air-water” trans-European transport Network.

The European Parliament has still to adopt other programmes in order to proper launch the 2014-2020 programming period. The Council has also to approve these programmes to implement them. A next negotiations and adoptions wave is coming soon!