Pislaru: Ministerial meeting on cohesion policy to take place in November

The government will organize a ministerial meeting on cohesion policy in November, and Romania must become a champion in the respective discussions, Minister of European Investments and Projects Dragos Pislaru declared on Friday at the "Smart Development, European Competitiveness" Summit in Bucharest."During the Danish Presidency, cohesion was not a priority topic. Not even a General Affairs Council formation for cohesion was convened, which should have meant the Cohesion ministers gathering for discussions once a semester. To make up for this, we are organizing a ministerial format in Bucharest, precisely on these topics," Pislaru specified, adding that the ministerial summit could bring together 10 EU ministers and several Secretaries of State responsible for cohesion policy."Somehow we have become a turning point, at least in the cohesion area, regarding the money we want in order to modernize the country. 10 EU ministers and three Secretaries of State will come to the ministerial meeting that we are organizing in November. Cohesion and competitiveness are part of the same equation and it is very important that the good things we have seen as a result of cohesion policy, which have also led to increased competitiveness, continue," Pislaru explained.He said that that the cohesion policy is, in fact, a lever for competitiveness."We want to highlight the idea of directing money to the regions that are a little behind compared to the Union average, in fact cohesion is a lever of competitiveness. This is not a situation where a few receive some funding, while the remainder of competitiveness resources are reserved exclusively for countries at the technological frontier. Through the competitiveness fund we want to take money through financial instruments that will go to the preferential financing area for SMEs. We aspire to 10 billion," the minister mentioned.The Concordia Employers' Confederation organized on Friday a summit under the motto "Smart Development, European Competitiveness", which brought together business and academic leaders, political decision-makers and economic experts to discuss how Romania can make the leap from an economy based on competitive costs to one based on innovation and high added value.The guests of honor were the President of Romania Nicusor Dan, and the President of BusinessEurope Fredrik Persson.The summit was organized as part of the project "Building up Concordia's capacity for social dialogue", co-financed by the European Union from the European Social Fund Plus (ESF+), and by the Government of Romania through the Education and Employment Program 2021-2027.