Cohesion Fund ISPA to the Cohesion Fund creating

Cohesion Fund ISPA to the Cohesion Fund: creating a project pipeline Brendan Smyth Polish unit

Cohesion Fund z. Transition: ISPA is a genetically modified Cohesion Fund z. The volume problem: absorbing a huge increase in available CF budget z. Solution: partial absorption of future Cohesion Fund budget by ISPA projects and creating a new project pipeline

Polish example z. Modeling the Polish environment sector z. Following the Copenhagen summit: z 33% of Polish allocation in CF zassume 50/50 division between transport and environment

Polish example € million ISPA 2003 187 CF 2004 2005 2006 707 582 777 – 3. 8 X 2002 4. 2 X 2002

Polish example z. Absorbing the future CF: u. Annual commitments to approved projects up to 2006 uplus: annual commitments up to 2006 to ISPA projects approved in 2003 u. CF projects approved in 2004 -2006 z 33 projects already approved, 19 under preparation for 2003, 55 in table to 2006

Polish example €m ISPA CF 2000 -02 2003 Total forecast 538 187 726 2004 2005 2006 Total 625 367 281 1274 €m allocation % 726 100 707 582 777 2066 88 62

Conclusions l € 1. 27 million out of € 2. 07 billion, 62% of the budget, can be accounted for by commitments to known projects l large volume of investment (c. € 1 billion) yet to be identified and prepared: additional investment in regional program not taken into account l largest projects in cities over 100, 000 inhabitants are already included in the forecast l more solid waste and air projects will not easily solve the absorption problem: smaller average cost than water projects

Project Cycle l Strategy l Selection criteria l Selection l Planning and design l Tendering and contracting l Construction l Monitoring l Ex-post evaluation

Conclusions z Front load commitments to solve problem in 2004 z Debalance in favour of transport in the short term? z Increase grant rate to the maximum? z Expand responsibility for project development and implementation to the regions z Approve groups of small projects but there is still the management and capacity problem in small centers z Widen the definition of an environment project (air quality, flood control, monitoring, old industrial sites) z Mobilise all sources of project preparation (IFIs etc) z Can the Cohesion Fund work with current resources?