LIVERPOOL would have "died" as a city without an injection of £1.8bn of Euro cash, the city's deputy leader has told European leaders.

Cllr Flo Clucas said the city would have entered a spiral of decline that it would not have recovered from, without the money spent between 1994 and 2006.

She was speaking in Brussels as fears are growing that the EU could seek to scale back funding to the UK and concentrate on Eastern Europe once the latest funding programme comes to an end in 2013.

Last night, Commissioner for European Policy Pawel Samecki said decisions would not start being made until next year or 2011 about the future of funding.

Cllr Clucas told delegates at the Committee of the Regions Open Days that, in the 1980s ,Liverpool lost 18% of its jobs and 20% of its population. She said: "At that stage, the city was dying.

"But, in 1994, something wonderful happened, we were given Objective 1 status.

"If we had not had it, my city would have gone into a decline and we would never have recovered."

She admitted that, in the first phase of Objective 1 aid, the city had concentrated too much on community projects.

She added: "We trained 500 florists though we have only got about 30 florist shops."

She listed a number of the city's recent successes, including the cruise liner terminal, and the Echo Arena and BT Convention Centre as examples of projects that had benefited from Euro funding.

She said: "I believe that European cohesion policy [funding] has a major potential to change the face of our cities and to create employment.

"To give people, who perhaps had little opportunity in life, a real kick start to achieve what they might otherwise not achieve.

"Liverpool is no longer looking inward, instead it is looking outwards to the rest of the world saying here we are ready for investment."

Cllr Clucas is also the president of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe group at the committee, an assembly of representatives from across Europe.

In the last Objective 1 programme that ran from 2000 to 2006 Merseyside spent £928m of European funding.