Portugal concludes EU structural funds negotiations

Portugal has completed negotiations with the European Commission for around €240Bn of European structural funds for the period 2021-2027.

The completion was announced during Portugal’s rotating presidency of the European Union which continues until the end of June.
The negotiations were made between the Portuguese presidency (and therefore, indirectly, the Portuguese government), the European Parliament, the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and the Cohesion Fund. The announcement was made by the Permanent Representation of Portugal to the EU (PPREU).
“We today concluded the negotiations for the regulations of the ERDF and the Cohesion Fund, finalising the provisional agreement reached in December (2020) during the German presidency (of the EU).
“Together, these two structural funds will represent more than €240Bn of European investment for the period 2021-2027” reads the publication of the announcement on PPREU on Twitter.
The European Regional Development Fund is one of the main financial policy instruments for EU cohesion and aims to contribute towards offsetting imbalances between the levels of development of European regions and reduce backwardness in terms of the development of less than favoured or poorer and underdeveloped regions.
This fund pays particular attention to the regions that face serious natural or demographic disadvantages, like regions with low population density (i.e., the Alentejo in Portugal) or island regions (the Azores and Madeira) or cross-border regions (Portuguese interior regions bordering Spain), or in mountainous regions (Trás-os-Montes).
The Cohesion Fund was created in 1994 and grants financing to projects in the environmental domain and in the domain of trans-European relations between Member-States with a national income per capita of less than 90% of the EU average.