Under codecision procedure, the European Parliament adopted the recommendation by Daniel Varela Suanzes-Carpegna (PPE,ES) for second reading of the proposal for a European Parliament and Council regulation on the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). The Parliament accepts the Council's common position, but requests that account should be taken of the need to link regions suffering from a structural handicap because of their insular, landlocked or peripheral status to the Community's central regions.
It also requests that the Fund's field of application should be extended to include the development of tourism and cultural investment (including the protection of cultural and natural heritage) and that the Fund also contribute to the implementation of 2 Community initiatives, namely INTERREG and URBAN.�