WIREDGOV

That's the message from the First Minister of Wales Rhodri Morgan to mark Europe Day this week, a celebration of the founding of what we now know as the European Union on 9th May 1950.

There are many people out there who will always want to criticise the European Union, said the First Minister.

Before Monty Python's Life of Brian gave us the age old question - 'what have the Romans ever done for us', we heard the question 'what has the European Union ever done for us'. We hear the same eternal question asked about the Welsh Assembly too.

Well the EU has done an enormous amount of good in Wales. It has brought billions of pounds of investment and helped create tens of thousands of new jobs to rejuvenate the economy of large areas of the country.

Critics of the EU ignore the economic facts and figures that show Wales has done extremely well thanks to European aid, and continues to do so.

The First Minister listed some of the benefits to Wales, including:

• The £1.5 billion Structural Funds programme which between 2000 and 2006 helped businesses grow and create better jobs.
• Up to 46,000 additional jobs will have been created by the end of the programmes.
• Up to 96,000 unemployed or otherwise economically inactive people will have been helped into work or training.
• Up to 2,400 new small and medium enterprises have been created.
• Economic inactivity in West Wales and the Valleys has fallen by 32,000 or 10 per cent since 1999. Over the same period the UK has seen a three per cent increase.
• Wales has been honoured with a prestigious RegioStars Award 2008 for innovation. OpTIC Technium, an innovation centre at the heart of a dynamic cluster of companies in North Wales, won the award for its cutting-edge research and development within the opto-electronics industry. The centre had received around £8million of ERDF funding.
• During 2007-13, Wales will benefit from more than £3.2 billion of total project investment in the region to boost economic growth and create new jobs.
• The programme, which includes Convergence funding for West Wales and the Valleys, will also help regenerate our most deprived communities and tackle climate change.

We can be proud of the way Wales has benefited thanks to the UK's membership of the European Union and we should celebrate Europe Day, which has not only brought increasing prosperity but has also brought peace to a continent that for centuries was dogged by internal disputes and wars," said the First Minister.

Related Information

http://new.wales.gov.uk/topics/international/european_union/?lang=en