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Focus on strategic, high value sectors such as research, innovations and digital technologies will remain the priority for the EU's funding from Cohesion Policy programs, European Commissioner for regional policy Corina Cretu said on Thursday.
In the Lithuanian capital Vilnius, the Commissioner met with the country's Prime Minister Saulius Skvernelis and discussed the importance of the EU investment.
"Lithuania is a country largely relying on EU's investment as regards its growth and rising quality of life, therefore, we will continue the trend of investing in priority areas and will focus more on a balanced development across Lithuanian regions," Skvernelis was quoted as saying in a statement released by the government.
The commissioner is visiting Lithuania to assess the Baltic country's achievements in terms of the absorption of EU structural and cohesion funds as well as to gather ideas on how the EU's Cohesion Policy should be implemented in the future, particularly in the new EU's financing period after 2020.
In a separate interview to local website vz.lt, the commissioner noted that she was satisfied with the implementation of the Lithuanian Cohesion Policy program so far.
She added, however, "further acceleration is needed to ensure that the objectives of the programme are reached, in terms of job creation, growth, better access to healthcare services".
"In short, to make sure that the funds bring real changes in the life of the Lithuanian people, as soon as possible," Cretu said in the interview.
In her words, Cohesion Policy has proven its ability to deliver on job creation and growth and is now a full-fledged investment policy, but there is still room for improvement.
"We should look together how to make it simpler; that means less paperwork, less red tape for small businesses when they fill in applications to benefit from the funds; we are working on it," the commissioner was quoted as saying in the interview.
The EU's Cohesion Policy is the framework behind hundreds of thousands of projects all over Europe that receive funding from the European Regional Development Fund, the European Social Fund and the Cohesion Fund, the European Commission explains on its website.
According to the data from the Commission, in the 2007-2013 funding period, Cohesion Policy funds accounted for over half of government investment expenditure in Lithuania.
(APD)
