STRUCTURAL FUNDS
 

The structural policy of the EU is an important part of the general EU policy, which main objective is to decrease the socio-economic dispartities among the EU regions. The structural policy of EU is implemented through :
   

 

-    Structural funds

-    Cohesian funds

 

1.      European Regional Development Fund

2.      European Social Fund

3.      European Agricultural Guidance and Guarantee Fund

4.      Financial Instrument for Fisheries Guidance

 

  For the programing period 1994 – 1999, the structural funds had six priorities:

  1. support of development and structural changes in less developed regions
  2. conversion in regions suffered with economic decline
  3. fight against long term unemployment and integrating young people into the labour market
  4. adaptation of workers to industrial and systems´ changes
  5. structural changes in agrosector within the frame of the agropolicy reform and supporting of modernization and structural changes in fishery
  6. support of the region with extreme low density of population

 

Since the year 2000, the categorization of the problematic regions within the EU has become much stricter because of the decreasing budget of structural funds (nowadays, more than 51 % of the overall EU population is living in this type of regions).

          

THE OBJECTIVES OF THE STRUCTURAL FUNDS

 The original six objectives of the structural funds were reduced to three for the time period of 2000- 2006.

The first objective is the support of less developed regions where GDP is less than 75 % of the total average GDP of the EU member states, with focus on investment and sustainable development.

The second objective is focused on the regions suffered by structural changes in agriculture and on the socio-economic conversion projects in the industrial sector.

The third objective is focused on increasing the employment rate through educational and requalification projects. This objective is based on the effectiveness of human resources, modernization of the educational system, training etc.

 Based on agreement between EUSTAT and the Slovak Republic, the Slovak territory was devided into four regions – NUTS II level (Bratislava, West, Middle and East Slovakia) and eight regions at NUTS III level (state regional dividing). Three out of these four regions at  NUTS II level (West, Middle, East Slovakia) didn´t achieve 50 % of the average EU GDP per capita. That means they will be allowed to use the sources allocated for the objective 1 of the RDF after the accession.

         By the time of accession, the Slovak Republic will not even achieve 90 % of the average EU GDP per capita and will be supported with the sources from the Cohesion fund.


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