Negotiators from the European Parliament and the Council of the EU are meeting on Wednesday morning, 20 March, for a fourth round of negotiations at political level on the InvestEU programme to take over from the ‘Juncker’ plan after 2020.
Uncertainty remains as to the possibility of a successful conclusion of the interinstitutional negotiations, even if there is strong political pressure to do so from both Parliament co-rapporteurs and the Romanian Presidency of the Council of the EU.
On the Romanian side, no one risked a prognosis on Tuesday 19 March, even if there was some insistence on uninterrupted internal mobilisation to find a positive outcome.
On the parliamentary side, one negotiating participant considered that an agreement on Wednesday was “not very realistic”, given the number of questions still open, even if there is legally “no reason to conclude” before the end of the parliamentary term. “Almost everything remains open”, said a second source.
Governance. Central to the controversial issues is the partnership that the European Commission and the European Investment Bank (EIB) will have to establish in the management of the future programme and the InvestEU Fund, which will be responsible for granting the EU public guarantee to risky private investment projects. One of the issues underlying these discussions is the potential conflicts of interest that may arise in the selection of projects and access to commercial data on selected projects.
Parliament criticises the position of the Council of the EU, which, like the Commission, has granted the EIB a veto right in the decision-making of the steering board, which will be responsible for defining the strategic guidelines of the InvestEU Fund.
MEPs should stick to their position on the placement, within the Commission, of the secretariat which will be responsible for preparing the decisions of the investment committee. On the contrary, the Council of the EU would like this secretariat to be based within the EIB (see EUROPE 12215/19).
On this point, a parliamentary source mentioned the possibility that the Romanian Presidency might finally accept the Parliament's position on the location of the secretariat, if MEPs validate the broad competences attributed by the Council of the EU to the EIB in the context of the partnership (Article 9a).
Another governance issue concerns the EIB's role as an advisory partner in the advisory hub, with Parliament hoping that national development banks can also play a role in this area.
Climate. Legal language has yet to be found on the extent of investments supported by InvestEU to combat climate change.
In order to strengthen the sustainability objective of the future fund, MEPs set a threshold of 40% for InvestEU's interventions to contribute to the fight against climate change, while the Council of the EU has set a threshold of 30%.
Work also remains to be done on how to limit InvestEU's ability to finance investment projects that would run counter to the Paris Climate Agreement. However, the ban on investing in fossil fuels, demanded by some environmental associations, should not be implemented. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)