Question 19825 — European Union

Summary

Mr. François André draws the attention of the Minister of Agriculture and Food to the progress of commitments and payments from the European LEADER program because the situation remains worrying. Component of the European Fund for Agriculture and Rural Development (EAFRD), the “links between rural economy development actions” (LEADER) system finances projects in 340 territories in mainland France and overseas. It is an essential lever for developing and diversifying activities in rural areas in terms of agriculture, tourism or the social and solidarity economy. According to figures from the Service and Payment Agency as of March 18, 2019, only 17.93% of funds have been programmed and 5.45% paid. In the latest European ranking, France is in penultimate position in terms of consumption of funds at the scale of 28 member states of the European Union. Only 37 million euros of the 687 million euros allocated over the period 2014 - 2020 have been paid. This observation could be explained by multiple factors, including the methods of transferring responsibility to the regions at the time of territorial reform, the cumbersome procedures linked to over-regulation, the complexity of IT tools and the lack of human resources to the processing and monitoring of files. In addition, project leaders report great complexity in putting together files, requiring real expertise in project engineering, as well as difficulty finding co-financing. This is why he asks it to indicate on the one hand the means that the Government intends to implement to amplify the dynamics of programming and payment of these funds essential to the development of rural areas, and on the other hand if it intends to support the principles of simplification of procedures and decentralization of management both for instruction and for payment with a view to the next multi-annual programming.

Machine translation from French. The official text remains authoritative.

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