2023-08-31 04:00:37
Asturias is the second autonomous community, after La Rioja, with the highest degree of execution of the structural funds of the European Union corresponding to the period 2014-2020, whose period of use expires on December 31.
According to a study released by the Spanish-Belgian Finnova Foundation, based on data from the General Directorate for Urban and Regional Policy of the European Commission, updated until last Thursday, Asturias has executed to date 74.46% of the 1,217 million assigned, with which, four months before its expiration, 310 million still remain to be executed, 25.54% of the total and of which 54 million have not yet been assigned to specific projects. The Asturian level of compliance is 17.46 points higher than the Spanish average (57%) and is in the European Union average, according to the same report.
Sources from the Ministry of Finance of the Principality explained that the degree of execution in Asturias -and that of the rest of the analyzed administrations- is higher than that disseminated by the Commission because there is a delay between the materialization of the funds and their certification by the executive body of the EU, which requires a process that consumes several months.
The report has been drawn up from three of the EU’s regional policy instruments: the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD) and the European Social Fund (ESF).
The Finnova Foundation highlights that, in the specific case of the largest structural fund, the FEDER (European Regional Development Fund), Asturias is a leader in its use with an absorption rate of 98%, the highest rate of all the autonomous communities in any of the community funds analysed.
The Principality, which will soon update its data, pointed out yesterday that the actual execution of the FEDEER was already above 98% last April, which is why it currently expects it to be even closer to 100%. In the case of the European Social Fund (ESF), the Asturian execution is around 55% and in the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD) it stands at 60%.
Finnova warns that the period to absorb the funds for the 2014-2020 period ends on December 31 and that, even though “structural funds have a rule that allows declaring expenses related to projects up to three years after the period”, the Spain as a whole “shows data that puts it at the tail of Europe and with just five months that allow it to reverse the situation.”
spain
According to the study, Spain has not yet materialized 32,000 of the 75,000 million assigned to the country, which means that the degree of execution is 57%, the lowest of all the countries of the European Union. At the opposite extreme, Portugal leads the use to date of the European resources made available to it with a degree of utilization of 93%.
According to the aforementioned Spanish-Belgian foundation, Spain as a whole has pending commitment of 32,378 million out of a total of 75,067 corresponding to structural and investment funds for the 2014-2020 period.
The 310 million that, according to figures from the European Commission, Asturias has pending execution represent 0.95% of the total funds for the period that Spain has not yet consumed.
Juanma Revuelta, CEO of Finnova, pointed to the lack of political attention and sensitivity as one of the causes of the Spanish delay in the use of EU funds and exemplified it by the fact that this was not the subject of debate and consideration by the parties during the recent election campaigns in May and July.
The report highlights that the new regional governments set up after the May 28 elections will have to manage the 2014-2020 structural funds pending absorption, as well as those corresponding to the 2021-2027 period, in addition to subsidized projects for the remainder of the year. by the Recovery and Resilience Mechanism and the Next Generation funds.
Charged to the latter, Asturias has received (with data up to May 23) 560 million. The Principality has until the end of the year to commit these resources from the first phase of the Recovery Plan and must execute them before 2026.
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