Without unanimous agreement on the modalities for financing the second instalment of €3 billion allocated to the Facility for Refugees in Turkey, the member states could decide to mobilise €500 million from the EU budget for the expenditure incurred in 2018.
During the meeting of national ambassadors to the EU (Coreper) on Thursday 7 June, Italy was again unable to give its approval or to say when a decision would be taken in Rome. It wanted a timetable for the payment of national contributions to the financing of the Emergency Trust Fund for Africa, which is still under resourced.
In the face such deadlock, Coreper could endorse a draft amending budget on Wednesday 13 June in order to grant €500 million to the Facility for Refugees so as to pay the salaries of the 5,000 teachers who enable the schooling of 300,000 refugee children in Turkey. The objective is to have a formal decision by the Ecofin Council on Friday 22 June and by the European Parliament in July.
Some member states nevertheless have difficulties insofar as this temporary decision could pre-empt a decision on the €3 billion envelope (€2 billion from the EU budget, €1 billion for the member states from 2019) of the Facility for Refugees. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)