On Friday 15 March, the Member States' ambassadors to the European Union (Coreper) decided to defend in the European Parliament the location - within the European Investment Bank (EIB) - of the secretariat of the InvestEU Fund's investment committee, which will take over from the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI), the financial arm of the ‘Juncker' plan.
This was the last element on which a decision by the Member States was still required for the Romanian Presidency of the Council of the EU to have a full negotiating mandate on the InvestEU programme, which will bring together 14 European financial instruments after 2020 (see EUROPE 12198/14).
Earlier this week, EU finance ministers asked the European Commission and the EIB to reach an agreement on the location of this management body by Friday.
The investment committee is intended to support the steering committee of the InvestEU Fund in granting the European guarantee which will be used to offset any losses suffered by risky projects. It will be composed of four independent experts, two appointed by the Commission and two by the EIB.
On Thursday evening, negotiations between the two rival European institutions had not been successful, according to our information. For the EIB, the Commission cannot play a banking role, while the Commission argues that it currently manages several instruments that will be transferred under the InvestEU programme.
Very keen to bring the interinstitutional negotiations with the European Parliament to a successful conclusion, the Romanian Presidency proposed that the secretariat of the investment committee should be based within the EIB, arguing that it was a “kind of negotiated agreement”.
According to another source, the Presidency would have “passed in force” by putting the EIB option on the table. During a round table discussion, no blocking minorities were identified. Only Belgium, Cyprus, Croatia, Spain and Italy pleaded for the secretariat to be welcomed into the Commission. Germany and France are of the opinion that the dossier must move forward.
This is “not the end of the story”, the source said, since the trilogue negotiations that will continue on Monday, 18 and Wednesday, 20 March will address this issue of governance. According to the source, the European Parliament, which advocates locating the secretariat within the Commission, knows that the EU Council's position on this point is "rather weak".
The national development agencies, which will manage 25% of the public guarantee granted via the InvestEU fund, also do not want the EIB to have access to confidential data on the projects they will support, considering the Commission as a more impartial actor.
Other issues need to be resolved before a final agreement can be reached on the eve of the EU summit. The European Parliament stresses the importance of devoting an ambitious share of the European guarantee to environmental and climate change projects, and would like particular attention to be paid to small and medium-sized enterprises with projects. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)