The Romanian Presidency of the Council of the EU decided to survey the European Finance Ministers on Tuesday 12 March on the location of the secretariat of the InvestEU Fund Investment Committee, the financial arm of the homonymous programme that will build on the experience of the 'Juncker' investment plan.
An investment committee will be established to review innovative and risky projects applying for support from the InvestEU Fund. It will be supported by a secretariat composed of four independent experts, two appointed by the Commission and two by the European Investment Bank (EIB).
A symbolic rivalry between the European Commission and the EIB, the location of the Investment Committee Secretariat is the subject of two blocking minorities in the Council of the EU, one from Member States opposed to the choice of Brussels within the Commission and the other from countries opposed to the choice of Luxembourg within the EIB.
Despite this, at the end of February, the Member States authorised the Presidency of the Council of the EU to open interinstitutional negotiations with the European Parliament on the InvestEU programme, asking the Commission and the EIB to agree in the meantime on the location of the secretariat (see EUROPE 12198/14).
As the Commission and the EIB have still not reached an agreement, the case goes back to ministerial level, the Member States' ambassadors to the EU should address the case on Friday 8 March.
The decision to be taken could have an impact on the location of other bodies that will be used to manage similar financial instruments in the field of external action (see EUROPE 12207/19).
On Monday 4 March, a first trilogue negotiation session was held on the InvestEU program. Negotiating the proposal for the Commission, Kerstin Jorna wrote on Twitter about "divergences" on the scope of the future programme, the degree of involvement of the instrument in the fight against climate change and governance.
The next interinstitutional negotiating session is scheduled to take place on Wednesday 13 March.
See: http://bit.ly/2TvA7gk (Mathieu Bion)