The European Parliament adopted by 561 votes to 46, with 38 abstentions, a legislative resolution on the proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council amending Regulation (EU) No 1303/2013 as regards the changes to the resources for economic, social and territorial cohesion and to the resources for the Investment for growth and jobs goal and for the European territorial cooperation goal.
The European Parliament’s position adopted at first reading, taking over the Commission proposal.
The legislative proposal introduces several technical changes to the Common Provisions on the European Structural and Investment Funds (Regulation (EU) No 1303/2013) in order to take into account the most recent statistical data available and to bring the figures in that regulation into line with the outcome of various financial decisions that have already been taken.
The data in the Common Provisions Regulation should be updated and adjusted to take account of:
regulatory provisions for the adjustment of cohesion policy instruments for the period 2017-2020;
- the new eligible status of Cyprus under the Cohesion Fund;
- transfers of appropriations between the various goals of cohesion policy;
- the 2017 amendment to the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) (Regulation (EU, Euratom) No 2017/1123) made a change to the rules on the margins left available below the ceilings for commitment appropriations of the MFF (Global MFF Margin), allowing those funds to be used, inter alia, for an extension of the Youth Employment Initiative (YEI) for the 2017-2020 period;
- a decision was adopted in 2015 (Regulation (EU, Euratom) 2015/623) to redistribute unused cohesion programme funds for 2014 (the first year of the current period) to the following years.
Under the proposed amendments, resources for economic, social and territorial cohesion would amount to EUR 329 978 401 458, of which:
- EUR 325 938 694 233 represents the global resources allocated to the ERDF, the ESF and the Cohesion Fund;
- EUR 4 039 707 225 represents a specific allocation for the YEI.
The proposal amends accordingly:
- the resources for the ‘Investment for growth and jobs’ goal and their distribution between the less developed regions, the transition regions, the more developed regions, the Member States receiving support from the Cohesion Fund and the regions outermost;
- the resources allocated to the ‘European territorial cooperation’ goal.
In addition, EUR 9 446 050 652 in current prices of the allocation provided for the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development and the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund which could not be committed in 2014 nor carried over to 2015 was transferred to subsequent years.