Brussels, 24/04/2015 (Agence Europe) - Representatives of the European Parliament, the Council of the EU and the European Commission began interinstitutional talks on Thursday 23 April on the draft Regulation setting up the European Fund for Strategic Investment (EFSI), the operational arm of the Juncker investment plan.
During their first trialogue, the EP and Council simply repeated their negotiating mandates without entering into detail, simply stating that they will work hard to conclude the talks by the summer.
The next round of talks in Strasbourg on Thursday 30 April would be meatier, predicted an EP source. “In the future, the work will focus on a number of key elements to ensure that the EU guarantee is irrevocable and unconditional, and based on sound and credible grounds,” explain sources from the Latvian Presidency of the Council of the EU. It will be based on the EU budget to the tune of €16 billion and the EIB budget for €5 billion. The EP opposes both the Council and Commission over how part of the public guarantee is to be culled from the EU budget (see EUROPE 11298). It rejects the idea of the Horizon 2020 and the Connecting Europe mechanism having their budgets raided, wanting this to be preceded by use of existing spending margins and annual budget surpluses. (Mathieu Bion)