Plaid Cymru - The Party of Wales European Parliament Leader, Jill Evans MEP has written to the European Commission to further express her concern at plans by the UK Government to repatriate European Structural Funds following 2006. These funds are potentially worth billions annually to many regions in Europe and many parts of Wales benefit in terms of Objective 1,2 & 3 money.

Jill Evans said:

"Gordon Brown has been campaigning to repatriate all European Structural Funding. If New Labour were to succeed it would be disastrous for Wales. The UK has recently superseded Italy as the most unequal Member State in the EU. The obsession of this Government with the Service Sector of South East of England means that the economies of traditional manufacturing areas such as Wales have been left to wither. Over 750,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost in the UK since New Labour came to power, and Wales has been loosing manufacturing jobs at a faster rate than any other component part.

Even though West Wales and the Valleys has been entitled to Objective 1 cash since 1999, its GDP level in comparison to the average of the current 15 Euro countries has fallen to 69.6% from 73.8% in 1999. Even with the accession of the 10 new states our Objective 1 areas have a EU 25 GDP level of 76.2%, only 1.2% above qualifying for full structural funding. What a damning indictment of New Labour's economic record.

Due to the anomalies caused by the accession of the 10 new states in terms regional fund allocation, the Commission is proposing a new category called the Statistic Effect Regions. Regions such as West Wales and the Valleys therefore who would qualify for another allotment of Objective 1 cash within an Euro 15 set up, but miss out because of Euro 25 , would receive 85% of full structural funding. This would be worth potentially £1bn for Wales between 2007-20013. For these proposals to be realised, Member States must agree to increase their contributions to the EU Regional Fund. However New Labour is intent on keeping contributions at the current level meaning that there wouldn't be enough funding for the new category.

Leaving aside the fact that the Treasury don't pass onto Wales all its entitled European cash, and that the New Labour Assembly Government are spending less on European projects in Wales than the Tory Government of John Major, European Structural Funds are the only redistributive tool available to Wales. Potentially, with proper political vision, structural funds could transform the Welsh economy. Just look at the Republic of Ireland, following the successful use of structural funds, their wealth per head of population is greater than that of the UK.

The choice is quite simple, the London dominated agenda of New Labour who will bind Wales to a spiral of economic and social decline, or Plaid Cymru, who have the vision to transform the economy and national life of our country."

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