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.