Politicians fear cross-Border body, report claims

Politicians and civil servants in Belfast have been afraid to offer too much freedom to a new body set up to control European Union spending in cross-Border areas, a major report suggested yesterday.

The analysis, "Creating Living Institutions: EU Cross-Border Co-operation after the Good Friday Agreement", focuses on the way the EU's INTERREG programme can boost co-operation.

Reporting directly to the North/South Ministerial Council, the Special EU Programmes Body (SEUPB) has been treated differently by the Department of Finance in Dublin, and the Department of Finance and Personnel in Belfast.

"The Irish Department of Finance concluded that INTERREG amounted to a small part of Ireland's EU funds and decided to let the body in Monaghan do that job," said University College Dublin academic Dr Brigid Laffan.

However, the Department of Finance and Personnel in Stormont, still getting used to the creation of a Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive, adopted a sharply different and more cautious approach.

"They wanted a strong steering approach. They issued a large number of guidance notices.

"Their logic was that accountability had to be maintained," said Dr Laffan, who co-wrote the report with department of politics colleague Dr Diane Payne.

However, civil servants on both sides of the Border remain suspicious that the SEUPB, which was formally set up in December 1999, could take power from existing centres of power.

Nevertheless, the academics are positive about the performance of the institutions created in the Good Friday agreement three years ago, though some greater local consultation is needed in some areas.

The complex web, including the North/South Ministerial Council and the SEUPB, are designed to "lock in" all of the participants: "They aim to make the price of quitting too high," said Laffan.

Funding for INTERREG III, which will run to 2006, is due to be approved by the European Commission in September. It rejected the first draft it received from the Irish and British governments last February.

Officials in Brussels were concerned the package as drafted could not be properly monitored and noted the fears expressed by two economic analyses.

Many of these difficulties have been ironed out and few now suspect that the funding, which will be more focused on cross-Border social programmes rather than infrastructural ones, will face any more significant hurdles.

Already, the Irish Government and the Northern Executive have agreed to funnel all the aid into a central fund, rather than paying it out directly to projects chosen by the SEUPB.

Full report: www.qub.ac.uk/ccbs