Merseyside’s next chunk of cash from the European Union has been announced – and as expected it is far less than the funds channeled to the region over the last 13 years.
With the EU’s limited regional development pot now being concentrated on the relatively poorer new member states in the centre, east and south of the continent, Brussels allocated the last of its Objective One money to Sefton and co. back in September.
Since 1994, Merseyside received a total £1.45bn of Objective One funding, a bonanza limited to only four UK regions measured as having GDP per head less than 75 percent of the EU average. Southport alone saw considerable development, centered on its seafront, stemming from the funds.
Now Brussels has decided on the figure of £212million reserved for Merseyside under its lesser-priority Objective 2 programme, running until 2011. UK Government match-funding will take that amount to £424million.
While the ending of Objective One was long-coming, its political effects may be significant. First, it makes ‘selling’ the EU to skeptical voters that much harder. Previously, supporters of the Union could make a hard-headed case for it by pointing to the local benefits of European munificence locally. Eurosceptics, of course, always countered by pointing to the outflow of British taxpayers’ money to EU coffers and the dead-hand of the red tape they claim flows back from Brussels.
Second, focusing on Southport, it makes it that more challenging for those who support the 1973 boundary settlement that took the resort into the borough of Sefton, within the county of Merseyside. Usually Sefton’s political lines of battle appear drawn on straight party lines, but we mustn’t forget that geographical tensions so often overlay these, sometimes existing independently of them. Take John Pugh MP, a former leader of Sefton Council who is on record as saying he has always supported a campaign for Southport to quit the borough. June’s Southport Area Committee also heard words of opposition to the mooted Liverpool City Region – which the government’s new Minister for the North West, Beverley Hughes, has said she will champion – from both Lib-Dem and Tory members, in response to a Southport Party question.
Burying the legacy of the wars that blighted the continent in the first half of the 20th century may be the great achievement of the European project. But an end to its status as Merseyside’s cash cow could put a dent in political peace in one borough at least.
- Post to:
del.icio.us
Digg
Newsvine
Nowpublic
Reddit
« Previous | Home | Next »