The European Parliament adopted by 324 votes to 178, with 130 abstentions, at third reading of the ordinary legislative procedure, a legislative resolution on the joint text approved by the Conciliation Committee for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council amending Regulation (EC) No 1905/2006 establishing a financing instrument for development cooperation.
Parliament decided to accept the compromise package as the remaining duration of the current instruments is rather short. It regrets that due to Council's rigidity it was not possible to further improve the text of the DCI/BAM instrument, in particular in relation to Parliament's role in strategic decisions, where an equal footing between the co-legislators is essential.
Parliament underlines that this result does not set a precedent for the future negotiations on the post-2013 external financing instruments. It declares that it will insist on the use of delegated acts wherever strategic political decisions are involved on financing and programming with regard to those instruments.
It should be noted that two statements are annexed to the resolution which were accepted by Parliament in plenary:
Commission statement for the Banana Accompanying Measures (BAM) programme within the Development Cooperation Instrument (DCI): in the specific case of the Banana Accompanying Measures (BAM) and in view of the rationale and the objectives of the programme as set out in Article 17a of the financing instrument for development cooperation (DCI), the European Commission confirms that, in determining the indicative country allocations, it will apply a methodology in an objective and uniform manner that takes account of the importance of the banana sector and the economic and developmental realities of each eligible beneficiary country. The Commission declares that it intends to apply a methodology which will give approximately equal weight to the first two criteria, whilst the third criterion will be used as a development coefficient. The objective of this methodology is to give equivalent importance across all beneficiary countries to their level of trade in bananas with the European Union and the importance of banana exports to the Union to the economies of each beneficiary country. The relative level of development will modulate the allocations in favour of countries with lower development levels, in line with the Union's development objectives as set out in the Treaties and the DCI.
Statement by the European Parliament and the Council on the use of Delegated Acts in the future Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) 2014-2020: the two institutions take note of the Commission Communication “A Budget for Europe 2020” , in particular in relation to the proposed use of delegated acts in the future external financing instruments and await legislative proposals, which will be duly considered. The document states that the future legal bases for the different instruments will propose the extensive use of delegated acts to allow for more flexibility in the management of the policies during the financing period, while respecting the prerogatives of the two branches of legislator. It is considered that democratic scrutiny of external aid must be improved. This could be achieved by the use of delegated acts in accordance with Article 290 of the Treaty for certain aspects of programmes, not only placing the co-legislators on an equal footing but also ensuring more flexibility in programming.