Brussels, 26/04/2013 (Agence Europe) - After being interrupted by members of the European Parliament (see EUROPE 10830), the interinstitutional negotiations on the European social fund (ESF) were resumed on Monday 22 April - but not without a certain mistrust. The next meeting is scheduled for 6 May.
A high-level meeting has been granted the Parliament's negotiators in order to discuss the most sensitive issues - but no date has yet been set. Elisabeth Morin-Chartier MEP (EPP, France), who is in the front line of the battle, told EUROPE on Friday 26 April that she was expecting “extremely hard negotiations” because the issues to be debated are not so much about divergences on technical questions, but point to a fundamentally different approach to the use of structural funds.
If the Council is pushing for the proposed scales to be made more flexible, such as the 25% of the budget allocated to the cohesion policy's ESF for the fight against poverty, it is because of the “resolve of the member states to keep the greatest freedom possible on the use of the European funds”, said Morin-Chartier, the permanent rapporteur on the ESF. Thus arises the Council's proposal, for example, for an amendment to include the possibility of financing infrastructure (such as crèches and hospitals). This approach “will take hold everywhere”, she says, determined not to make any concessions. (JK/transl.fl)