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The report of the European Parliament on the general regulation of the structural and cohesion funds from 2007 to 2013 requests that the Canary Islands and the rest of the outermost regions (ORs) benefit from full compliance with Article 299.2 of the Treaty and, therefore, "receive special treatment with regard to their access" to these European Union (EU) aid "including regions whose gross domestic product is above 75 percent of the Community average".
The Greek MEP from the European People's Party (EPP), Konstantinos Hatzidakis, is the rapporteur of this opinion report that will be discussed today in the plenary session of the European Parliament which, from yesterday until next Thursday, is held in Strasbourg. Along with the Hatzidakis report, five other documents arrive at the plenary that will be the basis of the joint debate on the structural funds that the MEPs will carry out, who will cast their vote on them a day later, that is, this Wednesday.
Of the six reports, half are simple consultations - including the text of the Greek popular MEP - and the remaining three, those relating to the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), the European Social Fund (ESF) and the creation of the European grouping of cross-border cooperation (EGCC), codecision in the first reading.
Therefore, the ‘Hatzidakis report' will express the opinion of the European Parliament regarding the general framework of the structural and cohesion funds from 2007 to 2013 but will not condition the final decision of the Twenty-Five.
The mention included in the document of this Greek MEP from the EPP seeks that, particularly the Canary Islands and Madeira that exceed the threshold of 75 percent, can be reinstalled in ‘objective 1' due to the disadvantages caused by their outermost status and without using the income level criterion.
Likewise, the ‘Hatzidakis report' "strongly supports the specific action of 1,100 million euros for the outermost regions" as established in the initial proposal of the European Commission, where it was also proposed to divide this amount using population as the sole criterion, so the Islands (with approximately 44 percent of the inhabitants of the ORs) could access about 480 million euros.
This specific program for the ORs disappeared during the failed negotiations between the Community partners on the financial perspectives from 2007 to 2013, and, to replace it, additional aid was created to which regions with a low population density in Austria, Finland and Sweden also had access.