In the EU system, programming, management and delivery of Structural Funds are primarily the responsibility of the Member States. While national ministries are ultimately responsible, most have established institutional structures for programming and overall management of the EU programmes at the regional level.
Typically it is the elected regional government, a regional board or a development agency that leads on the programming and management of EU Structural Funds.
However, EU regulations have for some years required the establishment of partnerships for the preparation and management of the Operational Programmes. Sub-regional organisations must be included in these.
For both programming and delivery, organisational and administrative arrangements are needed to enable the different levels of governance to work together effectively. Not surprisingly, these arrangements reflect the structures of regional, sub-regional and local government and the more general ‘governance culture’ in each country. Up to now, not all countries have placed a high priority on involving sub-regional organisations in programme development or management, so close operational partnerships have not developed everywhere.
In fact there are different ways in which sub-regional organisations may be successfully involved in shaping and managing the Operational Programmes for their regions, and this chapter illustrates some of them.
In ERDF and ESF programmes for 2000-2006 an element of devolved delivery to sub-regional organisations was possible. Some SRN partners have had an active role in selecting, monitoring and evaluating projects in receipt of Structural Funds support. In particular, Tampere, Turku, Modena, Bristol and Cumbria have been responsible for fostering and managing clusters of projects funded by Objective 2, with match funding from domestic budgets.
In some countries, involvement in Structural Funds programming has taken place through established arrangements for regional/sub-regional dialogue rather than through special arrangements for dealing with EU funds. In Finland, for example, sub-regions participate in programming via their representation on regional committees or boards.
In the case of the Objective 1 and 2 programmes in Finland, municipalities have been represented on the Regional Management Committee of each programme via membership of their Regional Council. The Regional Council is the lead organisation for regional development, responsible for drawing up a Regional Plan and ensuring delivery of a strategic implementation programme. All municipalities in a region are required to be members of their Regional Council, which is a joint municipal board.
In Tampere the EU Office has coordinated the delivery of Objective 2 in the suburb of Hervanta has invited the regional EU funding authorities for a round table discussion once or twice a year, to report the results of the programme at the local level and informally discuss development challenges and possible solutions. The Ministry of the Interior has acknowledged this practice as a useful supplement to the annual reports of the Regional Management Committee. From the perspective of Hervanta, different from the other Objective 2 sub-regions, local reporting using its own indicators has provided a detailed understanding of future needs.
The Regional Council of Southwest Finland works through 5 geographical sub-regions, each of which has a board, while the regional council is directly elected. For Structural Funds management and delivery the funding authorities in South West Finland have established an EU project group. In place since 2000, this has brought together 6 different funding authorities, dealing with, for example, Objective 2, INTERREG and the Rural Development Programme. It can advise project developers, meets fortnightly, and has an informal operating style. The group is non-hierarchical rather than region/sub-region. It discusses and jointly decides on which budget is most appropriate for each viable funding application.
Every funding application goes to the project group for an opinion. In particular, the region looks for a statement on the application from the sub-region. Sub-regional organisations are considered those most able to identify the most appropriate projects for their areas. However, the group does not make the final decisions on funding, applications are passed to the relevant funding authority for this.
The project group has set up the Project Net of Southwest Finland, a web-based, searchable data management system covering all projects submitted to the different funding programmes. It is a practical and accessible management tool relating to a range of funding programmes applying in a defined geographical area. Every funding authority inputs its project applications into the system. It is possible, for example, to find the date of a meeting at which a particular project will be discussed. The system can also be searched to establish whether similar actions have been financed previously, thus avoiding funding the same projects twice. A public section enables projects receiving funding to be identified. However, unsuccessful applications are not disclosed. It is also possible to search for projects by sub-region. There is an own-region monitoring system additional to the official monitoring systems for Finland.
Elsewhere, new legal mechanisms have been set up to enable the regional and sub-regional representatives to work together on programming and delivery tasks.
In the Objective 2 Programme for Emilia-Romagna Region in 2000-2006, much responsibility for management and delivery of Priority II ‘Concerted action for local development’ was devolved from the region to the provinces, with programme definition and project development and selection taking place largely at sub-regional level. There was a strong focus on partnership, with vertical links between the Managing Authority, the 9 provinces and local authorities, and horizontal links with stakeholders who were involved in all phases of Structural Funds management.
Guidelines established at regional level provided the framework for Local Development Plans (LDPs) produced by each of the provinces in collaboration with many local actors, such as municipalities, business associations, trades unions, and Leader+ Local Action Groups. The LDPs were incorporated into the Objective 2 Single Programming Document (SPD). The Managing Authority then produced three development plans, one for each territorial area, and only after this work was complete was the Programme Complement finalised.
Local actors – including eventual beneficiaries of the programme – thus had a formal role in the programming process. They had voting rights and were able to influence the criteria for project selection.
The Managing Authority opted to continue with this negotiated programming approach during the life of the programme, developing two policy tools for this – the Programme Conference and the Covenant.
At the start of the 2000-06 funding period, Modena Province and many local partners were directly involved in Objective 2 programming through a Programme Conference, led by the province, with one voting member from the region. A local development plan prepared by the province in cooperation with municipalities, business associations and other stakeholders was incorporated into the SPD.
Project selection has been largely a matter of cooperation between the municipalities and the province, orchestrated by the province, but within formal rules established by the region. In implementing the programme, beneficiary organisations have dealt only with the province. Rather than having open calls for project selection, the province has collected project bids, mainly from municipalities, held discussions with local politicians about which to prioritise, and then submitted a list of eligible projects to the Programme Conference for final approval.
The institutional basis of the Programming Conference in Modena is a regional law of Emilia-Romagna on urban and sectoral planning. This requires every province to produce a general territorial plan by means of a Programme Conference, with the participants to be invited designated by law. Representatives of the region, all municipalities, provinces and neighbouring provinces, ‘umbrella’ organisations (such as the Association of Mountain Municipalities) and environmental bodies such as National Parks must all be included. Any province can decide to invite further participants, but there are restrictions about what kind of representatives can vote. Rules are set out, for example, on the minimum number of meetings required. After the conference has been held the responsibility for preparation of the final plan passes to the province.
The legal instrument for this arrangement as applied to Objective 2 programming is a Covenant (or Convention) defining the relationship between Emilia-Romagna as the Managing Authority and each province.
The Covenant is a formal agreement between the Managing Authority and an individual province defining the roles and responsibilities of each tier of government - the managing and implementing bodies. The covenant defines, for example, the funds needed to finance the activities approved by the Programme Conferences and the rules to be observed by local authorities and other beneficiaries. The provinces sign a second covenant with the final beneficiaries for day-to-day management of each project.
For Objective 2 Emilia-Romagna region held a total of 18 Programme Conferences, two per province. Through these conferences many projects were approved, including investments in infrastructure, all of them negotiated at local level and without the need for tendering procedures.
This way of working is completely new, even for municipalities. Previously, project developers worked at risk in preparing and submitting projects, having no certainty that their bids would succeed. The new method has reduced risk. The municipalities have had a much better understanding of actions likely to be financed and as a result have been able to invest much more in the detailed design of projects, resulting in a higher quality of delivery.
In most cases, selected projects have received assured funding for a period of three to four years, receiving about 50% co-financing. As well as providing the beneficiaries with a relatively stable working environment, this approach has increased sensitivity to local needs, contributed to the dissemination of good practices and increased the skills of local stakeholders in dealing with complex EU rules.
There has been some success in achieving integration of projects and investments on particular topics. Modena has achieved synergies between different projects carried out by the region, province and municipalities in the same local area. An example is restoration of a village square using Objective 2 funds complemented by the provision of public lighting and road repairs paid for through new regional laws. Often a very small investment from Objective 2 has been part of a complex package of activities, with substantial results.
In this system, provinces like Modena have in effect become intermediate bodies, not only supporting organisations but acting as ‘decentralised regional offices’ with responsibilities for implementation. This has enabled provinces to become an effective focus for the beneficiaries, with a more active role than simply information-giving. The work is carried out with a small staff and at a cost which is low in relation to the impacts in the locality. Bristol City Council has a directly comparable function in the South West of England (see below).
The approach developed for Objective 2 in Emilia-Romagna is now used in the management of domestic funds elsewhere in the region.
In Finland the main urban centres (represented by Turku and Tampere in SRN) set up dedicated management arrangements to coordinate the delivery of projects in the areas eligible for ERDF funds in 2000-2006.
A key step towards an expanded role for the City of Turku in delivering Objective 2 funds was agreement by the Regional Council of Southwest Finland (the Managing Authority) and the Employment and Economic Development Centre of Southwest Finland to set up an intermediary unit in the City’s offices as both a point of contact and a source of expertise for project applicants.
Called the Linkki project and located within the City of Turku’s Centre for Communication, this unit works with local residents, businesses and associations and with funding providers and public administrators as well as with projects themselves, seeking to ensure effective implementation of a cluster of nearly 40 complementary projects in receipt of Objective 2 funding.
Support for both development and implementation of the projects is a central feature of Linkki’s activities. Staff of Linkki also give a view on project applications. In East Turku all project applications for Objective 2 have been subject to a pre-evaluation using a checklist covering feasibility, likely impact and efficiency of projects, conformity with the programme strategy and relevance to the specific problems of the locality.
Linkki also provides expert services, especially in communications, finance, follow-up and bench-marking, to support high quality implementation of projects. With the support of Linkki staff, some of the best operational models have been transferred from the projects to the basic operations of the city and elsewhere.
Linkki has been subject to a formal evaluation process, including through the ‘Linkki Barometer’ – an assessment of the outcomes of the projects against policy objectives for East Turku, and for the City as a whole.
Comparable arrangements apply in Tampere where the City’s EU Office has coordinated Objective 2 project development in the suburb of Hervanta.
In contrast to Turku’s Linkki, the EU Office set up in Tampere to deliver Objective 2 in the suburb of Hervanta was not in itself an EU funded project but a unit within the City’s Business Development Centre, funded by the city. At the beginning of the 2007 this became a permanent unit charged with coordinating urban projects in Tampere.
The EU Office’s financial independence from the Objective 2 programme blurred the coordination responsibilities between the city administration and the Regional Council that in Turku’s case was clearer. However, the dedicated budget and the absence of strict project goal-setting gave flexibility to the everyday work and made it possible to react quickly to arising needs.
As well as coordinating the delivery of its own projects, the EU office has negotiated and managed the municipal match funding of all ERDF-funded projects. It has assisted in filling the gap between the application and planning phase (in most cases not eligible for EU funding) and project implementation. The EU Office has also helped project participants to meet the bureaucratic administrative and financial requirements of the city administration as regards, for example, recruitment and other HR matters, financial claims, negotiations for budget increases, reporting and information-giving.
In 2003 the EU office and the projects became part of the Business and Development Centre of Tampere City, which carries out a range of other programmes (e.g. eTampere, Creative Tampere) and Objective 3 ESF projects. As well as improving delivery, this merger made the efforts to fit the programme to city strategies and goals more effective.
The active participation of the city in the Objective 2 Programme contributed significantly to the balance of the whole Hervanta EU programme. For example, without the projects carried out by the city itself, the number of projects under the Objective 2 Priority 3 ‘Developing the area structure and living environment’ would probably have remained low.
Project example: Ensimetri in Tampere
Despite their significant coordination and support roles, the Linkki and Hervanta offices did not play a strong role in programme development (having been established after the programmes were agreed) and they did not have devolved responsibility for final budgetary decisions in Objective 2. Although statements from the sub-region about each application were crucial in decision-making, final decisions on funding were taken by the Regional Council.
Comparisons may also be drawn with arrangements in the North West of England, where Cumbria County Council was the Accountable Body for Structural Funds implementation for 2000-2006 but did not have devolved control of Objective 2 funds or an overall body responsible for delivery. The County did set up common management arrangements for appraisal, monitoring and claims/finance for projects funded from both EU and domestic funds. These arrangements were developed in response to the particular circumstances of Cumbria, where contrasts between the urban/industrial and rural parts of the county, the distances between communities, and the wide range of funds accessed all make the integrated delivery of regeneration programmes challenging.
This management work has been undertaken by the Council’s integrated Regeneration Support Team.
The Regeneration Support Team (RST) within Cumbria County Council supported Objectives 2 and 3 and LEADER+ in 2000-2006, along with domestic programmes. It is currently financed by ERDF/ESF Technical Assistance and by Cumbria partners from a wide range of sectors. The 12 person team is managed, and the staff employed, by the local authority. This is the only organisation in the North West of England delivering EU and national regeneration funding together.
The team is not directly involved with project beneficiaries but rather supports the development companies and other project development bodies across the whole county. It provides an integrated service to the various partners in Cumbria and reduces red tape. Activities include, for example, training, liaison with the RDA and regeneration companies, initial appraisal of project applications and giving advice on them, maintaining a database and files on all projects, and scrutinising all running projects.
The team also deals with grant claims and payments to projects, works with the UK’s Audit Commission to compile national statements of accounts, and deals with ESF managers (such as Job Centre Plus), helping them to bring projects together. The RST also has a lobbying and awareness-raising function, seeking to influence EU programmes, for example by working with the County’s Brussels office and promoting EU opportunities across the county.
In some Member States, local authorities and other sub-regional organisations have typically participated in the preparation of Structural Funds Operational Programmes through membership of working groups, overseen by regional governmental bodies. This has been the case in the UK, for example, where the process has until recently been led mainly by central government offices in the English regions and by the Devolved Administrations elsewhere. There may be only one or two officials from different types of sub-regional body on each working group and they must endeavour to represent the interests of many others.
Despite a somewhat limited role for sub-regional bodies in programming, a few such bodies in the UK had a significant role in the hands-on management of the funds in the 2000-06 period, with devolved responsibility for the management and delivery of some Priorities and Measures in Objective 1 or 2 programmes regarded as appropriate for local implementation.
Bristol City Council has managed specific urban measures in the South West Objective 2 Programme. The City has a seat on the PMC and thus a formal role at programme level. However, the regional and local representatives have not collaborated on the day to day management of the urban measures, which has been left very much to the City and its various local stakeholder partnerships. Significantly, project assessment and funding decisions have been taken by a sub-regional board (the Regeneration Group of the Bristol Partnership), with the region (represented by the Government Office) ‘signing off’ these decisions.
With a population of about 400,000, Bristol is a generally prosperous city containing some very deprived central wards. The City Council, with a range of local partners, previously ran an URBAN I programme via a locally-managed and delivered Action Plan. A positive independent evaluation of the management and outcomes of this programme led to use of the same model to manage URBAN II, and an element of the South West Objective 2 programme (ERDF and ESF) has been delivered in the same way during the period 2000-2006.
Bristol City Council has managed an ERDF URBAN II CIP through a Local Action Plan and a devolved ERDF/ESF Objective 2 Programme through a Local Action Plan as an ‘intermediate body’. Bristol City Council has been the ‘Accountable Body’ for the devolved parts of the South West Objective 2 programme. The Local Action Plan is the key delivery mechanism, locally managed by the Bristol Partnership. It is the framework for the complementary use of EU and various domestic regeneration programmes for which disadvantaged wards in central Bristol are eligible, notably the Neighbourhood Renewal Fund. Use of the Local Action Plan especially enables the ‘niche needs‘ of urban populations (such as Muslim women, single mothers or black youth) to be met and, through tailored programmes, enables resources to be targeted on particular sectors, such as media and cultural businesses. These target groups and sectors are identified in the Action Plan as local strategic priorities.
The City Council has been able to harness match-funding and offer successful projects advances of funding rather than always paying in arrears. Results include positive outcomes ‘on the ground’ and progress towards helping citizens to feel part of the ‘European project’.
As the experience of Cumbria also shows, compared with the arrangements in Finland and Italy, practice in the UK is not so much a partnership between the regional agencies and local authorities as a contractual arrangement, with the sub-regional body having responsibility for some tasks delegated to it by the Programme Monitoring Committee which oversees its performance.
Although few sub-regional organisations have been closely involved in programme management up to now, many have well-developed skills in project monitoring and evaluation which can be harnessed by the regional bodies responsible for programme management. This is especially the case for some regional development agencies which combine both a strategic approach and hands-on experience of project delivery.
In the Piedmont region of Italy, Project Cycle Management (PCM) methodology has been applied to the implementation of projects funded through EQUAL II.
The main feature of PCM is the definition of clear project objectives and results meeting the real needs of the final beneficiaries. To do this means involving the final beneficiaries from the project planning stage so as to identify their problems and establish cause/effect relationships. These problems then need to be ‘reversed’ and expressed as objectives, and the activities needed to reach them identified.
The development of a toolkit for use by project applicants and the establishment of a management system for monitoring and evaluation of the programme as a whole were prompted by past problems in the region, in particular the failure to involve the final beneficiaries, lack of attention to sustainability and lack of monitoring.
The PCM methodology is now strongly recommended by Piedmont Region, the institution in charge of the evaluation of projects and programme delivery.
Some EU regions chose not to involve sub-regional organisations directly in Structural Funds programming or delivery in the period 2000-06. However, regional and sub-regional organisations must often collaborate in other areas of work, and may do so very effectively.
For example, the SRN partner Diputació de Barcelona has not been involved in programme management recently, but has worked closely with Catalunya region on the development and implementation of highly strategic projects co-financed by various EU budgets.
Details of Diputacio de Barcelona projects
The Catalan Strategy for Employment (Estrategia Catalana per l’ocupació – ECO) is a new regional employment strategy based on an ESF Article 6 funded pilot project to develop a local Territorial Employment Pact. The initial idea came from the Diputació de Barcelona, but implementation involved the combined efforts of the regional and provincial authorities and a wide stakeholder partnership. The Catalan Region coordinated the project and subsequent regional employment strategy, since it has formal competence for employment matters.
Similarly, Lille collaborates with Nord/Pas-de-Calais on strategic urban regeneration projects.
Lille Métropole Communauté Urbaine is a metropolitan local government dealing with urban development. It works closely with the Nord/Pas-de-Calais Regional Council, which is in charge of public services programming, to implement policies on its territory. The two bodies have complementary competencies. Their partnership working is reinforced when both are involved in a European project.
In the Interreg IIIB High Speed Trains project1 for example, the Regional Council and Lille Métropole cooperate respectively as ‘expert’ and ‘demonstrator’ on the Armentières multimodal point. This is a main transport hub for the connection between Lille and the West Flanders basin in Belgium. Lille Métropole Communauté Urbaine is seeking to improve the direct accessibility of the Armentière Station by redeveloping the station area and its urban surroundings, as the station is located in a deprived area surrounded by brownfield sites. Both authorities are working to achieve better connections between the rail and bus schedules.
A further example of region/sub-region collaboration is provided by the INTERREG IIIC RFO Regional Triangle of Weimar in which Nord/Pas-de Calais Regional Council, Nord-Rhine Westphalia and Silesia are partners. As brownfield regeneration is high on the agenda of both the Region and Lille Métropole, Nord/Pas-de-Calais has asked Lille Métropole to bring its expertise to bear in the sub-project Integrated Management and Revitalisation of Contaminated Sites (www.um.katowice.pl/strony/integrasites).
There are demonstrably successful systems for joint working at sub-regional level that cover both programming and project selection and demonstrate real cooperation between regional and sub-regional partners.
SRN examples like the EU project group in South West Finland, the Programme Conference in Modena depend upon acceptance of the principle of subsidiarity and an element of trust between governmental levels. Although these are relatively open structures, the arrangements are formalised so that roles and responsibilities are well demarcated. Additionally, there needs to be clear lines of accountability, especially in decision-making processes for project approval. Clearly, for sub-delegation of programme priorities, as in Bristol, these are crucial considerations.
The inter-governmental coordination of several different EU funds – as illustrated by South West Finland’s EU project group – is judged to be easier in a medium-sized organisation or locality than in a large region.
Arrangements like this demonstrate the importance of political will and the need for appropriate capacity and expertise at both regional and sub-regional levels.
The capacity of sub regional organisations to achieve the mutual benefits of productive engagement with their regions can be enhanced through the establishment of strategic alliances with their counterparts in other European countries. Territorial cooperation is explored in the next chapter.
