The Commission
fully supports the results of the inter-institutional negotiations and
can therefore accept the Council's position at first reading.
Following the
trilogue negotiations on 27 June 2011, the Chairman of the BUDG Committee of
the European Parliament sent a letter to the Hungarian Presidency confirming
that should the Council adopt as its position at first reading the text
approved by the ECOFIN (subject to legal-linguistic verification), he would
recommend to the BUDG Committee and then to the Parliament as a whole in
plenary session, that the Council's position be accepted without amendment at
Parliament's second reading. The General Affairs Council reached a political
agreement on this basis on 18 July 2011.
The main
points which were negotiated and agreed upon by the three institutions are
the following:
(1) The
amount of the regional ceilings:
- EUR 1billion
increase of the ceiling for the Southern Neighbourhood region. An
increase of 4% of all other regional and sub-regional ceilings of the
general mandate; the overall increase would be of around EUR 1.7 bn (on
top of the EUR 2bn additional climate change mandate);
- the above
increases would be flagged to be of a temporary nature and with soft
conditionality (increases dedicated to countries undertaking political
reform as assessed by the Commission with the involvement of the EEAS);
- in terms of
flexibility, the EIB governing bodies may decide to reallocate an amount
of up to 10% of the regional ceilings of the general mandate within
and between regions (it used to be only between regions).
(2) Development aspects:
- some
amendments were introduced at the request of the EP focussing on the
need for EIB to better report and assess the development, social,
environmental and human rights impact of its activities (e.g. by
defining specific performance indicators and thoroughly monitoring those
aspects throughout the lifecycle of a project);
- the text has
been clarified further to reflect that the EIB's support to poverty
reduction and the achievement of Millennium Development Goals would
mainly be indirect by fostering inclusive growth and sustainable
economic and social development through the financing of operations
following the general objectives set out in the Decision.
(3) Country
eligibility:
- Belarus will
not be declared eligible (while it will remain 'potentially' eligible);
- the
Commission will be empowered to activate the mandate for potentially
eligible country or also to deactivate/suspend it through delegated acts
(under the previous Decision, this would have required an ordinary
legislative procedure). This will allow the Commission to more rapidly
activate/suspend the mandate in certain countries if political
circumstances change;
- from a
technical point of view, two lists have been set up in Annexes to the
Decision: the list of all potentially eligible regions and countries and
the list of actually eligible regions and countries (the second one only
comprising country from the first one). The Commission would be
empowered to modify the second list by delegated acts.
(4) EU
Platform on Cooperation and Development: it has
been agreed that the Commission will set up and chair a Group of Experts
(GoE) to study the concept of an EU Platform for Cooperation and Development.
The GoE will be composed by the Commission, EEAS, Member States and EIB.
Other financial institutions will be consulted but not be permanent members
of the GoE.
(5)
Regional policy framework: Recitals 15 – 20 in
the Commission proposal were moved to a new Annex IV "regional policy
framework", after appropriate redrafting.