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Cross-border
economic
development
32
Practical guide : promoting projects
Providing
financial
assistance
to project
developers
The emergence of projects depends substantially
on the financial resources available to implement
cross-border initiatives. While there are many
sources of public or private-sector financing of
cross-border economic projects, access to some
of these sources, such as European programmes,
should be facilitated. Some types of financing,
such as traditional and honour loans, equity
holdings, etc. need to be further developed.
For many economic players, the procedures and
calendar of European programmes, which often
involve the reimbursement of expenses one, or
even two years, after they are incurred, are not
very compatible with their project life cycles.
This discrepancy partly explains private-sector
players’ very limited use of European funding
and particularly Cohesion Policy programmes.
Programme procedures must be streamlined
as much as possible to increase accessibility
to European funding for private-sector players.
This means, for example, shortening the process
of attribution of financial aid and application
processing times (for example, reimbursement of
expenses in INTERREG projects).