In preparation for his opinion on the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), Michael Schneider, State Secretary for Saxony-Anhalt, today met with stakeholders to debate the main challenges for economic, social and territorial cohesion in Europe. "The links between European Cohesion Policy and demographic developments are obvious" he underlined. "Regions with severe and permanent demographic problems need special support."

The proposed ERDF Regulation states that Operational Programmes co-financed by the ERDF shall pay particular attention to addressing the specific difficulties of areas with severe and permanent natural or demographic handicaps. Peter Berkowitz, representative of the Directorate-General for Regional Policy in the European Commission, therefore referred to a series of working papers on territories with specific geographical features and explained they generally perform relatively poorly compared to the EU-27 average. However, his main point was that each category includes a wide range of situations and the extent of disparities within categories often compares with that observed when considering the EU-27 as a whole.

The demographic developments in the European context was the subject of a presentation from Tim Leibert, from the Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography, which described the danger of a downwards spiral triggered by a decrease in population, ageing and low fertility rates and resulting in a loss of economic and social dynamism, reduced economic performance and overall attractiveness of the region. He highlighted the need for external support to break this cycle.

Mikael Janson described the difficulties facing his region of North Sweden adding that Cohesion Policy should be less about helping those in need and more about compensating a lack of competitiveness by investing in the future. For his part, Jean-Didier Hache, Director of the conference of peripheral and maritime regions of Europe (CRPM), underlined the importance of considering demographic trends and its impact on cohesion.

Michael Schneider concluded "the thematic concentration and priorities of investment, as foreseen in the Draft Regulations, must leave enough flexibility to develop and implement new and innovative approaches to tackle the demographic challenges that an increasing number of regions face. We must go beyond a mere geographical definition of the challenge and use the Treaty definition of least favoured regions as a starting point so we can begin to tackle the problem."