In Saxony's opinion, the regions in Europe need more rather than less say in European decision-making processes. At a foreign cabinet meeting in Brussels, the government of Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer (CDU) adopted a European strategy and did not spare any criticism of the European Commission's plans to centralize funds.
Saxony rejects plans to centralize funds
The two largest pots of the current 1.2 trillion euro budget, the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and the so-called cohesion policy, which is intended to help economically underdeveloped regions, together account for two thirds of the funds and are to be merged into a fund for national and regional partnership plans. Saxony rejects this. This would significantly restrict the regions' scope for action and jeopardize targeted funding on the ground, it said.
"We do not support this principle of 'divide and conquer' in future EU funding," said Economics Minister Dirk Panter (SPD). If there are fewer funds available, you have to deal with it. However, we do not want things to be thrown together that do not belong together, and we do not want to see distribution struggles and disparities between the various regions at regional level.
