Changes from plenary report to adopted text

P. whereas the ITI and place-based policies are necessary conditions to achieve EU strategic objectives such as the green and digital transitions; whereas place-based policies can help territories to escape from long-term economic decline and the ‘regional development trap’, in which a region is unable to retain its economic dynamics in terms of income, productivity and employment;

Q. whereas the TA2030 defines two overarching objectives, a Just Europe and a Green Europe, which have six priorities (Balanced Europe, Functional Regions, Integration beyond borders, Healthy Environment, Circular Economy and Sustainable Connections) for developing the European territory as a whole along with all of its places; whereas the TA2030 further aligns EU territorial development objectives with the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the European Green Deal; whereas the European Urban Agenda, through the Leipzig Charter, supports the objectives of the TA2030;

R. whereas strong common territorial development through the CPR and implementation of the TA2030 can serve as a vehicle for strengthening solidarity and democratic processes and for a fair and green EU; whereas territorial approaches add value by applying a strategic, spatial lens that captures the specific combinations of social, institutional, economic and environmental challenges and opportunities that influence the development of all types of territories;

S. whereas implementation of the TA2030 priorities remains uneven across the EU, in particular taking into consideration spatial disparities such as insularity; whereas the TA2030 conclusions show growing inequalities within the EU, which accentuate the gaps between people and between territories;

T. whereas the TA2030 calls for the territorial dimension of sectoral policies to be strengthened at all levels of governance; whereas the driving principles of the TA2030 are encompassed in the two priorities ‘People and places are drifting apart’ and ‘Sustainable development and climate change’;

U. whereas seven pilot actions were launched with the adoption of the TA2030, serving as an example of the application of its objectives on the ground, at local and regional level, and inspiring joint actions across the EU, namely: ‘A future for lagging regions’, ‘Understanding how sector policies shape spatial (im)balances’, ‘Small places matter’, ‘Cross-border spatial planning’, ‘Climate action in Alpine towns’, ,Climate change adaptation and resilience through landscape transition’, and ‘Reducing land artificialisation, urban sprawl and soil sealing in cities of different sizes and functional urban areas’;

V. whereas, taking into account the limited geographical balance in the development of these pilot actions and the administrative difficulties encountered when pilot actions were financed by several programmes, better data collection is needed, as well as a coherent revision of the TA2030;

1. Stresses that, in the 2014-2020 period, only 28 % of strategies for sustainable urban development were implemented through ITIs; calls on the Commission to take action to encourage the use of such tools to develop the TA2030, in particular through stepped-up communication activities;

2. Stresses the valuable contribution to territorial development delivered by actions implemented through CLLD such as those under the LEADER programme; calls on the Commission and the Member States to reinforce LEADER by increasing its budgetary envelope, by guaranteeing a high level of autonomy for the Local Action Groups regarding their constitution and their decision-making and reducing the administrative burden;

3. Calls on the Commission to use the results of the upcoming 2024 evaluation report for the 2014-2020 programming period, as well as the results of actions delivered through CLLD such as those under the LEADER programme, to support programmes for the 2021-2027 period; notes the importance of the qualitative analysis of territorial development tools; regrets, in this regard, the conclusion of the special report of the European Court of Auditors on LEADER and CLLD that their benefits are not sufficiently demonstrated;

4. Welcomes the Handbook of territorial and local development strategies and the Handbook of sustainable urban development strategies as guides for all administrative levels for the design, implementation and monitoring of territorial and local, including urban, development strategies; believes the dissemination of good practices should be fostered with a view to ensuring that projects are effective and sustainable; regrets, however, the belated publication of these handbooks and encourages the Commission to produce timely guidelines to simplify the process for developing the programmes; highlights the need to offer more guidance and greater flexibility to Member States on the implementation of PO5 ‘Europe closer to citizens’, and the actions to achieve it, and to align them with those set out in the TA2030 and create incentives to allocate more funding to PO5;

5. Calls on the Member States to promote strategic spatial planning that takes into account territories as a whole beyond metropolitan, urban and functional urban areas; calls, furthermore, on the Member States to strengthen rural-urban links as a way of achieving better balanced territorial development across the EU and to consider cross-border planning and implementation through bottom-up approaches such as CLLD/ITI;

6. Calls on the Commission and the Council to earmark funding for rural areas and regions that suffer from severe and permanent natural or demographic handicaps in the same way that 8 % of cohesion policy funds are earmarked for the development of programmes under the Urban Agenda; notes that these funds should be predominantly used via integrated territorial development tools;

7. Takes into account the capacities demonstrated by local and regional authorities in the implementation and management of territorial tools, and considers that a paradigm shift is necessary in the involvement of local and regional authorities in the planning, implementation and management of territorial tools; calls for an effective implementation of the partnership principle and in-depth consultation with local and regional authorities and other stakeholders prior to the definition of ITI and CLLD actions; highlights the importance of the bottom-up approach to territorial development, while empowering citizens to take ownership of the development of their territories;

8. Calls for territorial or local development strategies funded by more than one programme to be merged into a single track, in accordance with Article 28 CPR and with the Commission’s support, where needed, in order to prevent delays and administrative obstacles; welcomes the possibility, introduced in the 2021-2027 programming period, to designate a lead fund for strategies funded by more than one fund;

9. Notes that territorial instruments, such as CLLDs and ITIs, are proven measures to bring the EU closer to citizens; notes that the data in the STRAT-Board for the 2014-2020 period shows that CLLDs played a major role in the development of territorial strategies, highlighting the strong interest at local level in actively participating in the development of these strategies; calls on the Member States and the Commission to simplify the administrative management of funds, especially cases where CLLDs draw from more than one fund; stresses that ITIs are the main tool used by Member States with a larger allocation of ERDF funds, as they may quickly absorb the amounts and are able to cover several main axes present in one or several programmes;

10. Underlines the clear distinction between Member States that are committed to developing ITIs or CLLDs and those that are not; calls on the Commission to clarify this differentiation in order to avoid geographical disparities and to provide for tailored technical support for the Member States that have not made use of these territorial tools; encourages all Member States to make greater use of the integrated territorial development tools as defined in Article 28 CPR and to ensure respect for partnership as defined in Article 8 CPR; takes the view that integrated territorial development tools should be mandatory for Member States;

11. Welcomes the technical simplifications in territorial development introduced in the 2021-2027 programming period; calls, however, on the Commission and the Member States to keep the necessary additional administrative regulations to a strict minimum and to focus more on proportionality, since small projects currently have proportionally higher administrative burdens (for beneficiaries) and administrative costs (for programme authorities) than larger projects;

12. Considers the TA2030 to be a real and proper instrument that aims to reduce the spatial dimension of inequalities and to ensure the EU’s cohesion through the management of each of its regions with their particularities; believes, therefore, that societies and territories should be more involved in acknowledging the importance of this Agenda; calls on the Commission to modify the role of the TA2030 beyond that of a territorial management guide;

13. Observes that the TA2030 not only advocates place-based policy responses to territorial challenges, but also provides a vision and ambition for the territorial cohesion objective through better involvement of local and regional authorities and citizens;

14. Highlights that although multi-funding is one of the main purposes of the territorial integrated tools, current findings show that the use of multi-funding may still prove difficult in some countries, especially since, in the current period, the EAFRD (rural development) is no longer included in the CPR and therefore additional and specific measures to align the rules of EAFRD and other cohesion policy funds would be needed (i.e. using different EU funds for integrated projects at the local level that address several policy objectives);

15. Calls on the Member States to actively promote gender mainstreaming in the preparation and implementation of the TA2030’s pilot projects on the ground;

16. Stresses that a fair and dignified income and quality of life for citizens and their families in rural areas is essential to ensure social progress and successful territorial and local development; insists on the need to ensure decent working and living conditions and social protection for all;

17. Stresses the importance of improving policy coherence and implementing rural proofing of future EU integrated territorial development and other relevant initiatives to assess the coherence and complementarity of EU policies and their potential impact on rural areas, thus effectively preventing rural depopulation and facilitating generational renewal, equal access to high-quality essential services and job creation in rural areas; stresses the importance of the rural proofing mechanism also when Member States assess the impacts of proposed legislation in rural areas; underlines the importance of involving local and regional authorities in the definition and implementation of rural proofing mechanisms, as well as in their governance at both EU and national levels, to combat transport-related social exclusion and to improve the territorial accessibility of the areas concerned in order to improve cross-border and rural-urban cooperation, access to broadband internet and adequate services, particularly healthcare and education, as well as the diversification of the rural economy and the revitalisation of rural areas, increasing the attractiveness of these areas, as well as ensuring a sustainable future for these communities;

18. Stresses that TA2030 actions should play a central role in partnership agreements and programmes; points out that these actions should be more decisive in the allocation of funds and the need to promote the integration of the TA2030 into EU policies, with a focus on levels of governance closer to the ground; believes that the TA2030 should be provided with adequate funding and an allocation methodology in the future multiannual financial framework;

19. Underlines as essential the inclusion of TA2030 priorities and objectives in the legislative instruments and programmes of the cohesion policy funds, which should be tailored to each territory; welcomes the TA2030 pilot actions that have been developed and calls on the Member States and the Commission to continue investing in these actions, improving their geographical balance and better coordinating them with the principles of the TA2030;

20. Stresses the need to involve Parliament, in particular its competent Committee on Regional Development, in the pilot actions in order to ensure that they are in line with current EU priorities, and to promote the results of pilot actions and communicate them at EU level, integrating and coordinating them with initiatives such as cohesion policy, in particular the ERDF and Interreg;

21. Calls for a strategy to facilitate synergies between different EU funds for projects implemented through territorial tools and for the administrative simplification of pilot actions financed by more than one fund in order to reduce the administrative barriers and facilitate applications for these projects;

22. Believes that businesses could play an essential role in territorial development strategies; calls on the Commission to support arrangements for collaborations between companies and local and regional authorities with a view to developing territorial development projects that foster job creation and economic growth;

23. Points out the huge potential of the TA2030 and its current and future pilot projects in addressing the highly diverse needs of non-urban areas, including rural areas, mountainous areas, islands and coastal areas, remote and sparsely populated areas and many other types of territories where a mix of urban and rural features coexist; highlights, in particular, the fact that rural areas are often confronted with demographic challenges, low population density and limited access to and quality of services of general interest, while not always having the capacity to design and implement innovative solutions, thus they can greatly benefit from the exchange of best practices;

24. Stresses the need for greater dissemination of the actions and achievements of the pilot projects as examples of the implementation of EU funds; favours the idea of a biennial conference to showcase the pilot actions to local and regional authorities, as well as relevant actors at national and EU level, linking it with other events such as those under the Rural Pact or the Cities Forum;

25. Calls on the Member States to develop their territorial agendas in line with the TA2030 as a basis for programming their territorial strategies, taking into account the specificities and highly diverse needs of each of their regions, and serving as an incentive, as well as in order to stimulate the decision-making process and the design of territorial and urban policies; calls, furthermore, on the Member States to enable different territorial strategies for all EU regions including rural areas, areas affected by industrial transition, regions that suffer from severe and permanent natural or demographic handicaps, such as the northernmost regions and regions with very low population densities, islands, cross-border regions and mountain regions;

26. Highlights that the good performance of governance structures can determine the optimal mix of investment priorities in order to achieve the necessary multilevel vertical and horizontal coordination to design and deliver integrated development strategies;

27. Calls on the Member States and the Commission to promote the implementation of the TA2030 beyond pilot actions, making this instrument a reference framework for action that provides concrete and adapted guidelines for EU territories to improve their performance; highlights the opportunity to link regional funding to the achievement of TA2030 priorities, and calls on the Commission to develop monitoring indicators linking the TA2030 and the use of cohesion policy funds, in particular the ERDF;

28. Reiterates the need to urgently strengthen EU policy regarding mitigation and adaptation to climate change, also in the light of the growing trend of extreme weather events in recent years and months in the EU; calls, therefore, on the public authorities to continue the fight against climate change; highlights, in this context, the need to step up the ambition and quality of the pilot projects within the objective ‘A Green Europe’ and its first priority ‘Healthy environment’; stresses that territorial development is key to building resilient regions and ensuring the sustainable implementation of cohesion policy funding;

29. Welcomes the European Economic and Social Committee’s proposal to promote a Europe-wide charter of rural/urban rights and responsibilities; is also convinced that more cooperation with urban areas is needed to ensure that no area or citizen is ‘left behind’ in the just transition to a climate-neutral, sustainable and prosperous European Union, striving for a rural and urban commitment to a fair approach and showing the added value of rural and urban organisations working together;

30. Underlines the necessity of ensuring a more balanced development of EU regions by guaranteeing better distribution of EU funds, including common agricultural policy support, within and among Member States; emphasises that it is impossible to achieve sustainable and long-term territorial development if support is allocated to different regions based on historical data;

31. Notes that more and more people are choosing to live in cities and work in rural areas; calls on the Commission to design programmes that take all territories into account, including metropolitan, urban and functional areas; encourages the Commission to design LEADER in such a way that it can be used by small cities;

32. Calls on the Commission to connect the experience gained in the implementation of the TA2030 with the future cohesion policy and the recommendations of the High-Level Group on the Future of Cohesion Policy in order to overcome territorial imbalances and functional mismatches in a more effective way; points out the opportunity presented by the TA2030 as a tool for assessing the impact of cohesion policy with regard to the objective of territorial cohesion;

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;

35. Calls for a single framework for strategies aimed at both urban and wider territorial development, treating territorial requirements as a whole; stresses that this could significantly reduce bureaucratic barriers in the acquisition of funds;

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;

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;

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’;

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;

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;

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;

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;

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