Paragon Europe (www.paragoneurope.eu) is a young local company that provides services revolving around the utilisation of EU funds and the development of knowledge economy tools. A one-day conference it organised last week at the Corinthia Palace Hotel in Attard, provided sufficient proof that a solid market for the utilisation of EU funds exits.

Prominent speakers such as Malta Labour Party deputy leader for parliamentary affairs Charles Mangion, Dr Joanna Drake, Pierre Pace and Alan Caruana, provided the audiences with presentations on the salient issues on EU funding both on a centralised and de-centralised level.

Three cases studies backed the arguments made by these speeches. Accompanying Ing. Bonello from ESDL and Ms Xuereb, general manager of the Victoria Hotel, there was Mr Attard from Zazu Football School. The latter explained to the audience that in order for an interested entity to be able to apply, no knowledge whatsoever of EU funds is needed. In fact, he stated that given that they are football coaches, they are not exactly in tune with the EU funding scene.

During the conference one could not help but notice that both the general public and government agencies are frustrated with the level of red tape that surrounds the system of funding distributions. With respect to this, Dr Drake advised the audience that this is something that we should all learn to cope with, even though she stated that admittedly it is not a pleasant situation to work with.

Many of those present were interested on how and whether these funds apply to varying entities such as local councils. These persons were in fact glad to find out that all entities of any type are eligible to apply for funding. Despite this interest, between 2004 and 2006 Malta has only been able to tap into 65 per cent of available funds, which amounts to Lm114.7 million. Therefore according to Dr Mangion, if Malta maintains the current take-up the gross amount of funds tapped will total about Lm33 million annually (65 per cent of Lm51 million per annum, for the seven year period between 2007-2013, amounting to Lm367 million in total under the decentralised funding).

The conference ultimately brought to light the need for us to utilise EU funding effectively as a country in order to decrease our dependence on central government coffers and to create a culture of entrepreneurship, innovation and self-sustainability, which will ultimately lead to Malta gaining competitive advantages within the EU arena.