During the evening of Wednesday 21 June, the representatives of the European Parliament and of the Maltese Presidency of the Council of the EU failed to reach an inter-institutional political agreement on doubling the firepower and duration of the 'Juncker' investment plan.
The budgetary conditions to allow the extension of the public guarantee granted by the EU Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI) to selected projects were only briefly touched upon. “It has been clear from the word go that the Maltese Presidency had no mandate to move towards the Parliament's position”, a parliamentary source commented on Thursday 22 June.
The MEPs reject the European Commission's proposal, which has been adopted by the Council, of once again making use - this time to the tune of €650 million - of the budgetary lines of the 'Horizon 2020' programme and of the Connecting Europe Facility (see EUROPE 11789). They prefer to take the money from the unused budgetary margins under the ceiling of one or more headings of the multi-annual financial framework 2014-2020.
Another stumbling block is the governance of the EFSI fund. Parliament wishes to appoint an independent expert to the investment committee, which the member states are currently refusing. The obligation by the directors of the EFSI fund to render account has still to be clarified.
Even so, some progress was made on several elements. Wording is reported to have been agreed upon to make the criteria of the scoreboard to guide project selection “more binding”, according to a second parliamentary source. It will still be possible to support a project that does not achieve the minimum number of points required, but reasons must be given for selecting such projects, the first source added.
Further inter-institutional negotiating sessions may be held under the Estonian Presidency of the Council in early July, on the sidelines of Parliament's plenary. Various sources fear that no definitive agreement will be possible before the summer break.
Next week, the outgoing Maltese Presidency is expected only to give a progress report at the next meeting of the national ambassadors to the EU. It is not expecting a debate to amend the mandate granted to it. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)