MARIGOT–President of the Collectivité Daniel Gibbs reacted in a press release Friday to an article by on-line newspaper Soualiga Post on August 5 regarding under-use of European Funds by St. Martin.
“Following the remarks made by Etienne Deplanques, Deputy Director of Public Policies at Direction General d’Outre Mer (DGOM), at his hearing on July 16 on the under-use of European funds in overseas territories – a statement partly transcribed in the Soualiga Post article – it is my duty to put the elements in their context,” Gibbs said in the release.
“While the MAPTAM law of January 27, 2014, transferred the management of the European Regional Development Funds (ERDF), agriculture and rural development funds FEADER and part of the European Social Funds (ESF) from the State to the regional councils, the Collectivité of St. Martin remains the only French outermost region (OR) that does not benefit from Operational Programmes (OP) dedicated to its territory and from the quality of the management authority of these funds.
“The ERDF and ESF funds dedicated to us are still hosted on Guadeloupe’s programmes and placed under the management authority of the Regional Préfet and, therefore, of the State. This link to Guadeloupe creates additional complexity in the management of funds and a lack of clarity for our project leaders.
“It is for this reason that we demand a complete administrative disconnection from Guadeloupe over the next programming period (2021-2027). This possibility had already been proposed by the European Commission in its comments to the French State on the draft partnership agreement 2014-2020, dated April 29, 2014.
“Point 36 of the report stated: With regard to the ERDF, it appears from the examination of the OP proposals that the proposed architecture for the Guadeloupe region, in this case an ERDF/ESF OP supplemented by an ESF/St. Martin OP (State), does not meet the Commission’s expectations in terms of strategy, coherence and effectiveness in the implementation of the programmes.
“An alternative proposal is requested for an ERDF/ESF PO for Guadeloupe managed by the Regional Council of Guadeloupe, an ESF-State PO (Guadeloupe) and an ERDF/ESF PO dedicated to the Collectivité of St. Martin and managed by the State services.
“This recommendation had no resonance in Paris. Deplanques, in his answers to the questions of Senators Victorin Lurel and Raymond Magras, even if he acknowledges halfway the responsibility of the State, mentions a ‘modest size programme’ for the ERDF/ESF in St. Martin, a programme whose existence I am unaware of, while failing to specify the link between our priorities and the ESF State OP of Guadeloupe.
“The under-use of European funds in St. Martin is primarily due to the complexity of this management architecture, which has contributed significantly to the late start of the programming of funds over this period. The first grants could only be awarded from the last quarter of 2015. Moreover, while the 46 per cent programming rate recorded for the ERDF as at May 31, 2019, (65 per cent for the ESF) may seem modest at this stage, the impact of Hurricane Irma and its halt on the programming dynamics observed at the end of 2015 and in 2016 cannot be ‘remotely’ reduced.
“In a context of devastation, the revision of priority projects of the ERDF component dedicated to St. Martin within the 2014-2020 State OP has proved necessary in order to allow European funds to contribute fully to the reconstruction effort of the territory and to the revival of economic activity. The work undertaken the day after the phenomenon by my services and the State services in Guadeloupe led to the validation of the revised OP by the European Commission at the end of 2018 with the creation of a new ‘reconstruction’ phase with a budget of 11 million euros.
“Thus, 2019 must be the year in which dynamic programming for European funds is resumed in St. Martin, in particular for the ERDF, which will support the reconstruction of the Quartier d’Orléans College, a wastewater treatment plant in Grand-Case, tourist accommodation, etc.
“However, in the current context of the closure of the 2014-2020 programming period, all the necessary resources will have to be deployed by the State as the managing authority of European funds in St. Martin to ensure that automatic decommitment is avoided and that the appropriations so much needed for our reconstruction are not lost.
“The Collectivité is continuing its organisational adaptation by strengthening its services in order to ensure a greater role in the management of European funds over the period 2021-2027, in the same way as other regional authorities. The objective will be threefold for the next period, namely: guarantee envelopes in line with our real needs for solid and durable construction, to obtain proper programmes in keeping with our OR status, and to ensure efficient local management of funds.”
Source: The Daily Herald https://www.thedailyherald.sx/islands/89889-gibbs-reacts-to-on-line-article-on-under-use-of-european-funds
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