Representatives of the European Parliament and the Romanian Presidency of the Council reached, late in the evening of Thursday 7 February, a political agreement on support for the implementation of the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) core network through the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF), in the event that a no-deal Brexit should take place.
"This adoption is a step forward. Even if we would have liked to go further", said Karima Delli (Greens/EFA, France), chairwoman of the Parliament's Transport Committee, at the end of this second meeting of interinstitutional negotiations ('trilogues').
This discussion echoes the European Commission's proposal of 1 August to review the identification of links with Ireland eligible for CEF funding. A first meeting had made it possible to define the political points to be negotiated (see EUROPE 12184).
Regulation 1316/2013 on the current CEF provides, notably, that aid may be granted to support maritime transport links between Ireland and the United Kingdom. The aim here is therefore to limit the negative impact of the United Kingdom's exit from the EU on Ireland in the event of non-agreement.
One of the points of disagreement concerned the ports that could benefit from assistance to accomplish this. The Council wanted to support only ports in the TEN-T core network (see EUROPE 12183) while the Parliament recommended including ports that were not part of the core network, but part of the comprehensive network, such as the ports of Brest or Roscoff (see EUROPE 12169).
The first option was chosen. According to our information, the ports in the comprehensive network could nevertheless benefit from funds for security and border checks under the CEF in the event of a no-deal Brexit. These latter sums would nevertheless be subject to uncertainty.
The European Parliament would also have obtained the possibility of considering an early revision of the post-2020 CEF architecture to counter the consequences of Brexit.
On the other hand, the parliamentarians' recommendation to create an emergency fund for adjustment to Brexit to support transport stakeholders and local authorities was not adopted by the co-legislators.
This agreement must now get the green light from the Member States' ambassadors to the EU ('Coreper') and MEPs. (Original version in French by Lucas Tripoteau)