There is no doubt that Europe needs growth. The last Summit finally admitted - what many of us have been repeating stubbornly - that any further budget consolidation, including austerity packages, must be growth friendly. The current forecasts are not good. If stagnation continues, it will eventually lead to a deep erosion of Europe's productive capital - human capital in particular, and young human capital even more so.

So we all welcome the efforts exerted at all levels of European governance to get the most out of EU budget-supported policies. In this context, we were surprised to hear from the President of the European Commission that there is 82 billion euro of, as it was called, "unspent" structural funds; 22 billion coming from the ESF, which corresponds to 30% of the 2007-13 allocation, and 60 billion from the other two funds (ERDF and Cohesion Fund), which means 22% of the current programming period's allocation. We discovered that this is not really unspent money, but rather not-yet spent money.

Looking more carefully into this announcement, we understand that these funds are not yet allocated to concrete projects, but that they are already committed to priorities and programmes. It could be expected that some member states would keep part of their allocation for 2012 and 2013. We understand that allocation to projects, largely through tenders, is a process lasting until the end of the financial perspective. We understand that the remaining 70% of ESF funding and 78% of cohesion and regional funds are either already paid, or tenders are completed, which means that legal commitments have been created or that projects are ongoing.

Our question most likely comes too early to request a fully fledged assessment from the Commission of the scope for the potential need of reprogramming. We understand that growth and jobs have since 2007 been priorities of cohesion policy and its overarching mission. Nevertheless, we fully share the view that the potential of cohesion policy to generate growth and jobs must be fully exploited. What is worrying, however, is that the way this proposal - of potential reprogramming of the funds planned by individual member states to be allocated to projects in the last two years of the current financial perspective - has been presented to public opinion has created false interpretations, unnecessarily undermining the image of the policy and of its real impact on growth and jobs generation.

Throughout the crisis, the European Parliament has supported all proposals coming from the Commission aimed at strengthening cohesion policy's response to the crisis. In record time we adopted the amendments to the General Regulation to increase co-financing rates, we are working very closely with the Commission and the Council to create a risk sharing facility to facilitate the use of funds in countries in distress. We know about absorption problems in some countries and appreciate the Commission's efforts to help countries like Bulgaria, Romania, Greece and Italy.