The proposal for the Sardinia ERDF Regional Program for the period 2021-2027 was approved by the Executive on the proposal of the Councilor for Planning and Budget, Giuseppe Fasolino. The document will now be forwarded to the European Commission which has already given a positive opinion.
The European Regional Development Fund acts in general on a number of areas: innovation and research; digital agenda; support for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs); low carbon economy.
Divided into 19 specific objectives, it has a total financial endowment of 1,581 million euros (70 per cent of EU co-financing and 30 national, the latter 70 per cent from the state budget and 30 per cent from the regional).
The program for Sardinia focuses on some points which are smart competitiveness, digital transition, green transition, sustainable urban mobility, more social and inclusive Sardinia, sustainable urban and territorial development.
"We promote a real diversification and modernization of the local economy, giving maximum attention to the territories and creating the right conditions for recovery - explains the president of the Region, Christian Solinas - The first challenge we face, in the aftermath of the harmful effects of a pandemic that in recent years has dramatically revealed the fragility of government systems, is to measure ourselves against a new reality and to do so we can only start that process of inescapable and necessary change to accelerate the modernization process of Sardinia, even with a regional program as ambitious as this one, focused above all on intelligent competitiveness and on the green transition, guidelines on which the greatest resources will be concentrated ".
“Promote smart growth and the digital transformation process of the regional system by relaunching the competitiveness of the production system and creating quality employment; ensure the sustainability of the regional growth process by promoting the green transition; foster the 'just transition' and inclusion of disadvantaged groups by ensuring equal access to quality and inclusive education, employment, tourism, culture and health services; placing urban areas as the engine of the process of change towards a society closer to citizens and promoting the identity of the peripheral territories to enhance the naturalistic and tourist potential of the island and activate new local processes of sustainable development "are the four main challenges.
Particular attention will be paid to territorial planning: "Precise integrated development projects will be defined in order to better design interventions in the local context, guaranteeing the operational integration of the different sources of funding, supporting cooperation between territories and strengthening administrative capacity through actions to accompany the project communities - adds the commissioner Fasolino -. An indispensable prerequisite for achieving the objectives of the Program will in fact be addressing social and territorial inequalities at the origin, making the most of the island's potential and the specific identities of its territory. In particular, the national strategy for internal areas represents, also in the framework of the 2021-2027 programming cycle, one of the primary areas for enhancing the combined action of European funds in support of fragile territories ".
On urban development policies, continuity will be guaranteed with the tools activated in the 2014-2020 Program, "involving the cities of Cagliari, Sassari and Olbia and extending the integrated approach already tested to the intermediate cities of Nuoro, Oristano, Carbonia and Iglesias - the commissioner continues -. In addition, action will be taken in specific functional urban areas identified within the metropolitan city of Cagliari and the new metropolitan city of Sassari, which will thus be involved in the development of the regional urban agenda ".
Yet another important element is simplification with the introduction of tools and procedures to facilitate administrative action.
(Unioneonline / ss)
