MoF: Line Ministries Shall Regard the Work for Beginning the Activities of the EU Funds’ New Programming Period as the Highest Priority
On Friday, 9 May, Minister for Finance Andris Vilks met with cooperation partners, inviting also the representatives of the Ministry of Economics (MoE) and the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Regional Development (MoEPRD) in order to keep up-to-date the issues on introducing the programmes of the European Union (EU) funds’ programming period 2014-2020. A special attention was drawn to issues on timely beginning of investments, discussing in detail the plans on heat insulation of dwellings, business incubators, industrial territories and on implementing the programmes of financial instruments.
“In order to be able to duly start implementing the projects of the new EU funds’ programming period there is considerably more intense work of the responsible ministries necessary on preparing the content-wise offer of the aid that is planned already for 2014. Our purpose is to provide for continuous availability of funding between two programming periods of the EU funds and for more rapid inflow of funding in Latvia’s national economy. The Ministry of Finance has taken all necessary steps so that line ministries could start a work on implementing the new initiatives. Therefore, line ministries shall regard the work for beginning the activities of the EU funds’ new programming period as the highest priority,” emphasized Minister for Finance Andris Vilks.
Participants of the meeting were informed about the amendments made in the base of normative enactments which prior to harmonising the planning documents of the EU structural funds for 2014-2020 with the European Commission (EC) allow to start implementing individual activities, the financing of which will be ensured later by the means available in the programming period 2014-2020 of the EU structural funds. In addition, the representatives of the Ministry of Finance informed cooperation partners about progress in the development of the EU funds’ planning documents as well as specified that in coming days there are the EC comments expected on the activity programme “Growth and Employment” of the new programming period. In parallel with the process of document harmonisation, all ministries are currently working on a development of the content of the aid measures planned for 2014. The Cabinet has already examined the informative reports submitted by the Ministry of Welfare and the Ministry of Transport for the aid conditions and these ministries have already started implementing the projects.
At the meeting, the Ministry of Economics and the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Regional Development were called not to hold back and to pay higher attention to the activities supervised by the ministries which have to be started earlier and which are related to the promotion of business activity, namely, to the programmes of business incubators, industrial areas and heat insulation of dwellings. There were the proposals of responsible services discussed about a model for implementing the programmes and about a time schedule for their implementation.
We recall that the Government has decided on a possibility to start financing earlier the projects of motor road infrastructure already in 2014 as well as to support the activities for promoting the employment and competitiveness of youth. It was also decided to make investments in research and innovations, increase of energy efficiency, city revitalisation and in an improvement of the quality of environment as well as to support the activities for providing the availability of more qualitative health services and for modernising professional educational institutions.
Photographs from the meeting are available here.
Information prepared by:
Ieva Raboviča
Senior Expert of Communication Division
Tel.: 67083880
Ieva.Rabovica@fm.gov.lv
