The Position Paper on the development of the Partnership Agreement and programmes in Portugal for 2014-2020 outlines the European Commission’s recommendations for the future programming period in Portugal: 1) reducing the number of programmes; 2) Ensuring strong coordination mechanisms/institutions; 3) a few national programmes covering broad thematic domains and ERDF financed regional programmes for each of the five mainland regions; 4)a national ESF operational programme 5) regional programmes for the outermost regions of Madeira and Azores.

The European Commission's Action Teams left for Slovakia and Portugal to assist national authorities in reprioritising and reprogramming unallocated structural and cohesion funds. Their aim is to reduce the souring rate of youth unemployment and provide support to SMEs. Action teams comprised of experts from DG REGIO, DG EMPL, DG Culture and DG ECFIN are already working or will soon start their work in six other Member States: Italy, Ireland, Greece, Latvia, Spain, and Lithuania.

 Source: European Commission