The Committee on Budgets adopted the report by Jan KOZLOWSKI (EPP, PL) on the proposal for a decision of the European Parliament and of the Council on mobilisation of the European Globalisation Adjustment Fund for a total amount of EUR 730 000 in commitment and payment appropriations to finance technical assistance at the initiative of the Commission (EGF/2012/000 TA 2012).
Members recall that the European Union has set up the appropriate legislative and budgetary instruments to provide additional support to workers who are suffering from the consequences of major structural changes in world trade patterns and to assist their reintegration into the labour market. They stress that the Union's financial assistance to workers made redundant should be dynamic and made available as quickly and efficiently as possible.
To recall, up to 0.35% of the annual EGF amount can be made available each year for technical assistance at the initiative at the Commission, in order to finance monitoring, information, administrative and technical support, as well as audit, control and evaluation activities necessary to implement the EGF Regulation, including the provision of information and guidance for the Member States in using, monitoring and evaluating the EGF and providing information on using the EGF to the European and national social partners.
In this context, the Commission requested that the EGF be mobilised in order to monitor applications received and paid and measures proposed and implemented, to expand the website, produce publications and audio-visual tools, to create a knowledge base, to provide administrative and technical support to Member States, and to prepare for the final evaluation of the EGF.
Given that the Commission's application fulfils the eligibility criteria set up by the EGF Regulation, MEPs request the institutions involved to make the necessary efforts to accelerate the mobilisation of the EGF for the requested amount.
Given that the application fulfils the eligibility criteria laid down by the EGF Regulation, Members call on the European Parliament to approve the decision annexed to this motion for a resolution.
Implementation of the EGF: Members request the institutions involved to make the necessary efforts to improve procedural and budgetary arrangements in order to accelerate the mobilisation of the EGF. They hope that further improvements in the procedure will be made within the framework of the upcoming review of the EGF and that greater efficiency, transparency and visibility of the EGF will be achieved. They welcome the fact that following repeated requests from Parliament, the 2012 budget shows payment appropriations of EUR 50 000 000 on the EGF budget line 04 05 01 in order to avoid there being transfers from other budget lines, as happened in the past. They regret the decision of the Council to block the extension of the "crisis derogation", allowing to provide financial assistance to workers made redundant as a result of the current financial and economic crisis in addition to those losing their job because of changes in global trade patterns, and increase the rate of Union co-financing to 65% of the programme costs, for applications submitted after the 31 December 2011 deadline. Members call on the Council to reintroduce this measure without delay.
Evaluation of the EGF: noting that the Commission will start to prepare the final evaluation of the EGF, Members regret, however, that the results will arrive too late to feed into the discussion on the new regulation for the EGF in 2014-2020, especially regarding the effectiveness of the use of the crisis derogation criterion.
In this context, Members invite the Commission to: (i) explain itself on the impact and efficiency of the information tools funded by technical assistance in previous years; (ii) present the progress made following the use of technical assistance in 2011; (iii) highlight the importance of networking and exchanging information and best practices and learn from Member States that have already put in place national information networks on the EGF.