Brussels, 20/05/2015 (Agence Europe) - Udo Bullmann (S&D, Germany), co-rapporteur on the draft regulation instituting the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI), is incredulous at the refusal of the Latvian Presidency of the Council of the EU to shift the position of the member states, with further inter-institutional negotiations having taken place on Wednesday 20 May (see EUROPE 11317).
“I cannot understand why the Council is sticking to its guns when so many questions need to be resolved in a very short space of time”, the German Social Democrat told EUROPE on Tuesday 19 May. The fields in which the positions of the European Parliament and of the member states are still a long way apart include the details for constituting the financial guarantee from the EU budget for the benefit of the EFSI, democratic controls on investment guidelines to be laid down by the steering committee of the EFSI and the scoreboard on the investment projects selected.
In mid-May, the Ecofin Council made not a single change to the negotiation mandate granted to the Latvian Presidency of the Council, with a number of countries stressing the need to stick to the ministerial agreement on the 'financing” plank of the financial arm of the Juncker investment plan (see EUROPE 11313). Only the European finance ministers are authorised to change this mandate, which contains a number of flexibility margins, but not when it comes to the constitution of the public guarantee from the EU budget. The meeting of the Council working group on the Juncker plan on Friday 22 May will take stock of the inter-institutional negotiations underway.
Even so, Bullmann feels that the document on the composition of the financial guarantee from the EU budget, presented to the co-legislator institutions earlier this week by the Commission, is “a step in the right direction”, which will allow the negotiations to start going into detail.
Although the EP in the Council have, on a number of occasions, stressed their intention of reaching a political agreement for the end of May (final trialogue session scheduled for Wednesday 27 May), the EP co-rapporteur said that in view of the number of open questions, it was highly unlikely that a deal could be struck at the final marathon negotiating session, as was the case in Spring 2014 for the 'resolution' plank of banking union. (Mathieu Bion)