On Wednesday 24 May, the Council and European Parliament, reached an agreement during the inter-institutional meeting on the proposal to modify the rules for the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) in regions devastated by natural disasters.
It should be pointed out that the European Commission proposed revising the existing rules in an effort to set out European co-financing at 100%, in an effort to help regions rebuild after an earthquake, such as the one that hit Italy in summer 2016 (see EUROPE 11671).
Unfortunately, the member states rejected this proposal and set the maximum co-financing ceiling at 90% (see EUROPE 11758), whilst the European Parliament supported the proposal by the European Commission to set a 5% ceiling on the total ERDF budget.
The two co-legislators cut this into two: the rate of co-financing was set at 95%. The 5% ceiling proposal was maintained, which potentially means that with these derogations for regional disaster zones, allocations are possible of up to the €9.8 billion.
European Commission not completely satisfied. The Commissioner for Regional Policy, Corina Crețu, said that she regretted that, “The initial Commission proposal to set a co-financing rate of 100% in these kinds of operations was not retained”. She expressed her dissatisfaction during an interview with EUROPE (see EUROPE 11782), but did acknowledge, however, the progress made with this adoption, for the regions affected. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)