The structural resources play a very important role in the Community Funds of the EU budget. These resources are the European Structural Funds (ERDF, ESF, EAGGF-orientation and FIFG) as well as the Cohesion Fund. Both the Structural Funds and the Cohesion Fund are geared towards promoting a greater degree of economic and social cohesion in the European Union via the joint funding of the public expenditure policies developed by the member-states, targeting the accomplishment of this goal. In the case of the European Structural Funds, by virtue of the provisions of articles 158 and 160 of the EU Treaty, this finality is pursued via policies that seek greater equilibrium between the level of development of the different regions and territories that make up the Union, whereby their application falls within the sphere of regional policy.
On the other hand, the Cohesion Fund addresses the goal of boosting economic growth and the real convergence of the member states of the Union with a lower level of development, striving to guarantee that growth will be compatible with the maintenance of their basic macroeconomic and budgetary equilibrium.
In Spain, the coordination of the application and management of the Structural Funds and the Cohesion Fund falls to the Ministry of Economy and Finance, via the General Directorate of Community Funds of the General Secretariat of Finance and Budgets, framed within the Secretary of State for Finance and Budgets. This General Directorate has, amongst others, the following powers and functions:
- Negotiation with the European Commission of matters related to the European Structural Funds, particularly with regard to objectives 1 and 2, as well as matters pertaining to the Cohesion Fund.
- The coordination of the territorial Administrations in all matters pertaining to the scheduling, monitoring and evaluation of the European Structural Funds and the Cohesion Fund, as well as the coordination of the other ministerial Departments responsible for the management of the European Structural Funds.
- The preparation of studies and the coordination of evaluations of programmes financed with European Structural Funds.
- The analysis, selection and monitoring of projects to be funded by the resources of the Cohesion Fund, the Interterritorial Compensation Fund and the Teruel Fund
- The proposal of payments from the European Regional Development Fund and from the Cohesion Fund to the target beneficiaries.