Reporter Alistair Houghton visits the EU capital to find out if Merseyside will win more grant aid

AS SO often at major conferences, what’s going on behind the scenes is more interesting than what goes on in the public eye.

Last week’s European Open Days programme in Brussels provided a fiesta of opportunities for regions and cities from throughout the continent to showcase their achievements.

Merseyside was well represented, as was the wider North West, with topics including the WICED women’s enterprise centre in Liverpool being discussed by delegates from across the Continent.

Yet, for all the optimism expressed in the dozens of public meetings and seminars, the future of Europe was being decided in a flurry of meetings in rooms throughout the jungle of office blocks that is Brussels’ European quarter.

Discussions are now well under way on the EU’s next budget round, which will run from 2013 to 2020.

Merseyside has benefited hugely from billions of pounds in European funding over the years, under Objective 1 and successor funding programmes.

It had been thought that Liverpool and other similar regions in Western Europe would not get funding on such levels in the future, as money would be directed towards poorer states in Eastern Europe.

But instead it is now looking more likely that the next EU budget, from 2013 until 2020, will include support for regions right across the EU. That could see Merseyside winning another £500m in European funding.

Officials from more than 80% of the EU’s 271 regions have signed a declaration calling for such support to be offered EU-wide. Last Thursday, many of those signatories took part in a lobby in Brussels, presenting a petition to European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso.

European Commissioner for regional policy Johannes Hahn – the EU’s most senior official in charge of regional policy – signalled last week that the Commission was looking to maintain support to all countries, including the UK.

Speaking to UK journalists, he said: “We understand regional policy as an investment policy, a policy that should cover all the regions.”

It may surprise some that regions in the UK will still be eligible for funding.

But the logic is simple. The Commission wants not only to boost the poorer regions of Europe, but also to ensure that wealthier regions stay competitive against other parts of the world.

EU officials not only want to make sure that Romania gets richer, but want to ensure that the UK and Germany stay competitive against international rivals such as Japan.

Even the South East of England could find itself with another tranche of European funding.

As one European Commission representative pointed out, the South East needs to compete against Japan and the US – and Europe as a whole will miss out if one of its main wealth-generating regions falls behind its wealthy rivals.

The new budget priorities will also have to match the European Commission’s 2020 strategy for “smart, sustainable and inclusive growth” – and a Europe-wide strategy can only work if all countries are involved.

Merseyside’s battle for more European funding has yet to be won. While more than 80% of the EU’s regions have signed up to the deal, national governments have not yet done so.

Even the British government has yet to agree. In a letter to the Daily Post last week, Cllr Paul Brant, deputy leader of Liverpool’s Labour-run council, and Arlene McCarthy, a Labour MEP, said they would be pushing the coalition Government to back more EU funding.

And the countries of Eastern Europe that would otherwise have got extra funding may complain if they miss out.

But North West representatives at last week’s event were optimistic that the North West could win hundreds of millions of pounds more in funding.

Liverpool-born Suzy Sumner, head of the Northwest Development Agency’s (NWDA’s) Brussels office, said last Thursday’s lobby was significant as it brought together regions from across Europe. She said: “It’s probably one of the first times the regions have come together in this way.

“In Germany and Spain, these regions are run by elected bodies. We had their presidents coming along. It’s quite a significant moment.”

Ms Sumner said she was optimistic that the UK could still receive European funding, but said there were still uncertain times ahead.

“If you’d asked me two months ago if I was hopeful, I would have said no,” she said. “But this battle is not won.

“At the moment, member states of the EU put 1% of their GDP to the EU. What I’m hearing at the moment, with the financial crisis, is that they want to reduce it to 0.75%. If a quarter of the EU budget goes, there will be casualties.”

Ms Sumner said the advantage of EU programmes – such as the Objective 1 scheme – is that they last for a long, fixed period, guaranteeing long-term investment.

“No national government can commit to a programme that lasts seven years,” she said. “It has longevity and security.”

Ms Sumner, who was brought up in Maghull, has lived in Brussels for 13 years – and knows the city so well she wrote parts of the Rough Guide to Brussels.

She and colleague Maureen Hick are the NWDA’s representatives in Brussels. Merseyside has its own official in Brussels, James Sharples, who works alongside the NWDA in North West of England House.

The offices keep organisations throughout the North West informed about what is happening in Brussels, and about any opportunities that are available for funding or for partnership projects.

They support the work of MEPs and members of the Committee of the Regions – the assembly of local government representatives from throughout Europe.

Ms Sumner said it was vital that Merseyside and the North West were strongly represented in the EU capital.

She said: “We’ve got our projects running at the moment and we’ve got a great team delivering them – here in Brussels I don’t worry about them on a day-to-day basis.

“What’s good about having a Brussels office is that we have somebody here to connect with what’s coming up. It’s about constantly looking at what’s coming up and what we can grab for the region. That comes down to cash, a lot of the time.”

Liverpool councillor Flo Clucas is a Brussels veteran, as president of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) on the Committee of the Regions. She will chair a CoR budget committee that will examine the EU’s future budget plans over the next two years – and is a powerful advocate of the power of European money.

“The question for the city region is ‘what do we need going forward?’

“Firstly, we need to make sure that our argument for additional EU money for our city-region is put on the table and listened to.

“Secondly, we need to make sure that the money we get is in sufficient quantities to do the job we want. Given the financial situation, that is not going to be easy.

“Thirdly, we need to make sure we are reclaiming or getting all the cash that is applicable to Merseyside – everything from transnational projects such as the Irish Sea Region to looking at how we can ensure equality across a whole range of things.

“The European Investment Bank, for example, is going to make cash available for particular projects.”

Cllr Clucas also wants the former Objective 1 areas of Merseyside to get extra transitional support as their GDP remains below the North West average.

“It isn’t going to be easy,” she said. “It’s going to take a lot of work.”