The European Parliament adopted, by 548 votes to 70, with 61 abstentions, a resolution on the Council position on Draft amending budget No 3/2018 of the European Union for the financial year 2018, Section III - Commission: extension of the facility for refugees in Turkey.
Members recalled that the Commission amended on 14 March 2018 its decision on the Facility for Refugees (FRT) in Turkey in order to allocate an additional EUR 3 billion (a ‘second tranche’) to the FRT, in line with the EU-Turkey Statement of 18 March 2016.
Draft amending budget No 3/2018 aims to add EUR 500 million in commitment appropriations to the 2018 Union budget as the 2018 Union contribution to the second tranche, in addition to the EUR 50 million financed from the existing Humanitarian Aid budgetary envelope in 2018.
Parliament has consistently stressed its support for the continuation of the FRT while emphasising that, as one of the two arms of the budgetary authority, it must be fully associated with the decision-making process relating to the extension of the FRT, inter alia to avoid the repetition of the procedure of its setting-up; whereas no negotiations on the financing of the second tranche of the FRT have so far taken place between Parliament and the Council.
Parliament took note of Draft amending budget No 3/2018 as submitted by the Commission while deploring the discrepancy between the absence of Parliament’s involvement in the adoption of the decisions on the setting-up and on the prolongation of the FRT on the one hand, and its role as budgetary authority in the financing of the FRT from the Union budget on the other hand.
Members regretted that the Commission did not include the 2018 financing of the FRT in its 2018 draft budget at any stage of the 2018 budgetary procedure. They believed that such inclusion would have been an opportunity for the two arms of the budgetary authority to discuss the financing of the whole second tranche of the FRT, as the positions of Parliament and of the Council diverge on the scale of the Union budget contribution.
The resolution urged the Commission to reinforce the monitoring of the use of the FRT and to report regularly and in sufficient detail to the budgetary authority on the compatibility of the actions financed with the underlying legal basis in general and the types of actions listed in the Commission Decision establishing the FRT.
Parliament noted that the purpose of Draft amending budget No 3/2018 is primarily to allow for the schooling of refugee children in Turkey to continue seamlessly. It approved the Council position on Draft amending budget No 3/2018.
Members stressed that this decision is without prejudice to its position on the remaining part of the financing of the second tranche of the FRT. Irrespective of the Council’s deliberations on the prolongation of the FRT, Parliament will fully retain its prerogatives through the 2019 budgetary procedure.