Implementation of EU regional policy in Austria, Finland and Sweden
On 3 July 1996, the Commission adopted a communication on the "Implementation of EU regional policy in Austria, Finland and Sweden", mapping out the submission and approval of Structural Fund programmes for the three new Member States. A striking feature of all the programmes, and especially those in Northern Europe where population is sparse, is the emphasis on information society applications and on the development of specialized skills in individual regions. These innovative features may have lessons for other regions elsewhere in the EU. Another feature is the strong emphasis on job creation by building up and diversifying SMEs. Before the end of 1995, mainstream funding was agreed through the Single Programming Documents. In the case of Finland, agreement was possible before the summer break because of the country's intensive preparation in the months leading up to accession. Funding decisions on the majority of Community initiatives will have been taken before summer 1996. There are a large number of INTERREG programmes dealing with cross-border cooperation, since each of these Member States has exceptionally long external borders - seven programmes for Austria and Finland, and nine for Sweden. In addition to INTERREG, Community initiatives will be implemented in the following fields: - Rural development: LEADER; - Employment and development of human resources: EMPLOYMENT - Adaptation of the workforce to industrial change: ADAPT; - Economic conversion of coal-mining areas: RECHAR; - Economic conversion of steel areas: RESIDER; - Defence conversion: KONVER; - Regions heavily dependent on the textiles and clothing sector: RETEX; - Adaptation of SMEs to the single market: SME; - Urban areas: URBAN; - Fisheries: PESCA. The overall Structural Fund allocation in 1995 for the three Member States was ECU 1,623 million for Austria, ECU 1,704 million for Finland, and ECU 1,420 million for Sweden. Cooperation between INTERREG and PHARE programmes is an element in the pre-accession strategy for countries that are candidates for future accession. Accession also underlines the importance of building democracy and new economic structures in the Baltic and Barents Sea regions, through the combined action of the INTERREG, PHARE and TACIS programmes.
Countries
Austria, Finland, Sweden