Commission proposes measures for crisis hit countries, including Cyprus

The Commission has proposed to the Council of the EU and the European Parliament an increase of 95% in the amount of co-financing programes in the cohesion policy for Cyprus, Greece and Portugal.

The total amount reaches 520 million euro, 20 m. for Cyprus, 400 m. for Greece and 100 m. for Portugal.

According to the Commission, the measures would help these Member States to tackle youth unemployment, support small and medium sized business and pay for key infrastructure projects.

In the absence of these proposed measures, Cohesion Policy investments for growth could be lost because of a lack of time to spend the money or because of the difficulty of finding national and private co-finance in the current economic climate.

The proposal, prompted by requests from EU governments and from the European Council, will now be sent to the European Parliament and the EU`s Council of Ministers for adoption.

The first measure would help to deliver around €500m growth promoting investments more quickly to Greece, Cyprus and Portugal. This would increase the EU contribution of Cohesion Policy investments and allow a lower national share. This would prolong an agreement on co-financing from December 2011 for another two years. It would also ease the strain on national budgets but involves no new money from the EU.