You're listening to the European Parliamentary Research Service podcast on the future of the European Regional Development Fund and the Cohesion Fund.

More flexibility and simplification in exchange for higher national co-financing rates.

That's how the Commission justifies the proposed cuts and cohesion policy for the next

long-term EU budget for 2021 to 27.

Want to know more about how this may affect you and your region?

Stay with us.

Since the current multi-annual financial framework was first developed, the world has changed

significantly.

New challenges such as migration, a slow economic recovery, growing inequalities and Brexit

have all shown the need for the next long-term EU budget to build in more flexibility.

As the Commission puts it, we just have to do more with less, an imperative which is forced

a general rethinking of where to best invest

EU money. As the EU's main investment policy and one of its most concrete expressions of solidarity,

the EU's cohesion policy has clearly been affected by this refocusing. The EU's cohesion

policy aims to strengthen economic, social and territorial cohesion by reducing regional disparities,

with particular attention paid to the least favoured regions and special territories.

To do so, it counts on three different funds, the European Regional Development Fund,

the Cohesion Fund and the European Social Fund. Together, they eat up almost a third of the total EU budget.

But with less cash available in the future, the Commission was forced to come up with

the proposal for a modernised cohesion policy and a more tailored approach to regional development.

So what will change in the future? Let's have a look.

The proposed new single regulation on the European Regional Development Fund and the Cohesion Fund,

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