Prague, Jan 26 (CTK) – The sum that the Czech Republic did not draw from EU funds in 2015 may be a few billion crowns lower than the ten billion crowns estimated at the beginning of January, Regional Development Minister Karla Slechtova said yesterday.
She said thanks to an exception pushed through with the help of EU Regional Policy Commissioner Corina Cretu, it will be possible to finance certain projects retroactively from the 2007-13 programming period.
“The idea came from the European Commission and I must praise very much how the commissioner is trying to help member countries,” Slechtova said at a press conference held after a meeting of the Visegrad Four (V4) and four partner countries.
The V4 is comprised of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. Their ministers and ministry representatives met politicians from Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania and Slovenia.
The Regional Development Ministry is the steering body of the Integrated Operational Programme (IOP).
“On Monday already, we addressed our mediating entities, that is the interior and health ministries. The projects we have gathered from the Health Ministry alone are worth 1.5 to two billion crowns. This means that the failure to draw all money within the IROP may really drop to the minimum,” Slechtova said.
Besides the IROP, the possibility of retroactive money drawing concerns the environment and transport ministries.
Slechtova said she estimates the deficit at eight billion crowns or even less now.
More precise data will be available at the beginning of July.
In the second programming period 2007-13, the Czech Republic could gain approximately 700 billion crowns, which was the most of all EU countries in proportion to the number of inhabitants.
The Czech Republic failed to draw 11.5 billion crowns in 2013 and nine billion in 2014.
($1=24.980 crowns)
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