Brussels, 20/04/2015 (Agence Europe) - On Monday 20 April, the economic affairs and budgets committees of the European Parliament voted on their position on the EFSI fund, the financial arm of the Juncker plan which aims to draw down private investments of €315 billion over three years.
One provision retained by the parliamentary committees is unlikely to facilitate trialogue negotiations with the member states, which will start on Thursday 23 April. This provision calls on the other two European institutions to start by making gradual use of all the flexibility in place within the EU budget before taking funds from the envelopes allocated to programmes and mechanisms already focusing on investment ('Horizon 2020', Connecting Europe Facility).
The Commission wants to take €8 billion from the EU budget, including €3.3 billion from the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF), to feed into the public guarantee of the EFSI fund, which will stand as guarantor for the first losses made by the selected projects (see EUROPE 11283). The Council, for its part, has made no changes to the envelope (€16 billion from the EU budget and €5 billion from the EIB) or the source of funds from the European budget.
“The target amount shall initially be met by 2022 at the latest through the gradual payment of resources” from the EU budget, the text states. “We have also reduced the impact on the Horizon 2020 and Connecting Europe Facility while keeping the amount of the guarantee fund intact, using all flexibility and assigning any EFSI surplus back to the programmes used to source the funds”, said José Manuel Fernandes (EPP, Portugal), the other co-rapporteur of the EP.
The EP and the Council see eye to eye over the importance of the principle of additionality, in other words the concept that the Juncker plan should support additional projects which would not find enough investors without this European initiative. In order to have some influence over the investment policy of the EFSI fund, the EP is calling for the orientations on this matter, to be drawn up by the governing Council of the EFSI, to be the subject of a delegated act, putting the EP and the Council on an equal footing.
Energy efficiency. The amendment promoted by the committee on industry (ITRE), which would see €5 billion earmarked for projects to promote energy efficiency, was not voted on.
“A democratic vote in the ITRE committee on a five billion energy efficiency fund within the Juncker plan was sabotaged by an orchestrated plot of grand coalition leadership”, lamented Claude Turmes (Greens/EFA, Luxembourg). According to a source close to the MEP, the presidents of the parliamentary committees unilaterally decided not to take account of this amendment and not put it to the vote. The MEP put forward alternative solutions on Monday morning, but he found nobody to negotiate with. Late last week, EUObserver.com reported that the Irish MEP Sean Kelly (EPP) had been ordered by the Prime Minister, Enda Kenny, to withdraw his signature from the amendment in question. Kelly told EUROPE that the EPP group had decided that there would be no earmarking of sectors for the resources of the EFSI fund. On reflection, and after consulting Dublin, “I felt as Leader of the Fine Gael delegation in the European Parliament it was only right and proper that I withdraw my name from the said amendment”, he explained.
A number of MEPs complained that they had not received the latest version of the compromise amendments in time. However, the president of the economic affairs committee, Roberto Gualtieri (S&D, Italy), withstood their calls for the vote to be postponed. (Elodie Lamer)