Brussels, 28/10/2013 (Agence Europe) - Will the delegations of the countries of the EU agree to the package on cohesion reform drawn up by the most recent institutional trilogue on Thursday 24 October? Coreper will settle the issue on Tuesday 29 October, on the basis of information communicated by the Lithuanian Presidency on the afternoon of Monday 28 October. The presidency hopes that a qualified majority will be reached, as macro-economic conditionality is unquestionably the element causing the delegations the greatest headache.
At this point, what is on the table on the matter, which is just the embryonic form of an informal agreement, does not fully dovetail either with the mandate of the European Parliament, which wanted to remove this conditionality, or with that of the Council, which wanted to keep the suspension of structural funds payments. This issue is still a grey area in the elements of the package. If payments are included, this should be either partially (only in the preventative arm of conditionality rather than the corrective one), or by placing an upper limit of 50% on cuts.
It appears, however, that the other aspects of an agreement on macro-conditionality have been secured. Specifically, the role of the Parliament has been reinforced, as the institution will indeed be involved in the decision-making procedure for the suspension of funds in the event of recurrent failures on the part of individual member states to observe economic injunctions of the EU. Not on the co-decision mode, but rather a structural dialogue with the Commission (by invitation or oral question), and this will be both before and after the decision to suspend funds (unlike the economic dialogue of the “six pack”, which takes place on a purely ex post basis). Additionally, the scale of the suspension of structural funds will be determined using a raft of socio-economic factors such as unemployment rate, poverty or recession. Lastly, it will also be possible to re-evaluate the decision to apply macro-conditionality in the event of sudden socio-economic setbacks in a member state. In other words, the scope of application of micro-economic conditionality, which has already been reduced to a last-resort means of applying pressure, has been redefined to the extreme in order to avoid arbitrary decisions as far as possible.
If Coreper approvesthese elements, in the form of a package and without reopening negotiations on other chapters, the approval process for the agreement on the cohesion policy will start. The parliamentary committee for regional development may vote on this package in the coming weeks - probably on 7 November, at an extraordinary meeting which was recently announced. A green light from its members would then allow the package to be voted on in plenary during the week of 18 November. However, the compromise which could be achieved at Tuesday's Coreper does not guarantee that it would be approved by the plenary. Indeed, the “deal” could be “difficult to sell” to the MEPs, according to a source close to the negotiations, bringing about the risk of having to open second-reading proceedings. (MD/transl.fl)