During the final trilaogue inter-institutional negotiating session on Wednesday 29 November, the Estonian Presidency of the Council of the EU and representatives from the European Parliament reached an agreement on the revised European Union guarantee for the EIB’s external lending mandate.
Two diplomatic sources informed EUROPE that “a provisional agreement was reached” on Wednesday and should be endorsed by the Committee of Permanent Representative to the EU (Coreper) on Friday.
As previously indicated (see EUROPE 11912), the global ceiling for the EU guarantee will be increased to €32.3 billion, which corresponds to the European Commission’s initial proposal.
With regard to the regional ceilings and in addition to a reduction of around €2 billion (€1.6 billion +€300 million) in interventions in countries that are potentially or officially EU candidate countries, a decision was taken to redistribute regional intervention ceilings according to the following distribution key: one third for the Eastern partnership countries and two thirds for Mediterranean countries.
One European source explained that the European Parliament originally wanted a greater increase in the global ceiling but agreed to the redline set out by the Council because the redistribution carried out between the regional platforms will allow for intervention to be carried out as it had advocated. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)