This consultation of local and regional authorities will feed into the Committee of the Regions' own-initiative opinion on the outcome of the negotiations on the Partnership Agreements and Operational Programmes. This opinion will be drawn up by the rapporteur, Ivan Žagar (SI/EPP), mayor of Slovenska Bistrica. The rapporteur will also ensure that the messages of the opinion (and thus also of the survey) will be heard by the European Commission and other European institutions. Besides this survey, the opinion will also draw on the results of our previous surveys on the PAs and ESIF co-financing.
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The main goal of the CoR opinion is to assess the partnership agreements (PA) and operational programmes (OP) from the perspective of regional and local authorities which will use the 2014-2020 European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF). The document will focus mainly on negotiation processes, the quality of the PAs and OPs, adherence to the Code of Conduct on Partnership, and the barriers to proper planning and implementation of ESIF. It will also contain suggestions on how to overcome obstacles.
The draft opinion will be discussed in the CoR's Territorial Cohesion Policy commission (COTER) on 2 March 2015. It will be discussed for a second time and adopted by COTER on 13 May 2015. The opinion will subsequently be submitted for adoption to the CoR plenary session on 8-9 July 2015.
