Negotiators from the European Parliament and the Council of the EU reached a provisional inter-institutional political agreement on the outlines of the InvestEU programme on Wednesday 20 March.
In the opinion of several participants interviewed by EUROPE, the positive outcome of the inter-institutional negotiations was far from obvious, but the political pressure and compromises on the table - notably on the governance of the programme through a specific partnership between the European Commission and the European Investment Bank (EIB) and the scale of investment to combat climate change - allowed political discussions to end in an agreement.
The InvestEU programme aims to take over from the Juncker investment plan and will bring together 14 existing financial instruments after 2020 (see EUROPE 12035/1). Its financial arm, the InvestEU Fund, will provide a public guarantee from the EU and EIB budget for private and risky investment projects selected by an investment committee.
This committee will be supported by a secretariat whose location, a symbol of the rivalry between the Commission and the EIB, has been the subject of bitterly contested negotiation.
Finally, contrary to what the Council of the EU wanted (see EUROPE 12215/19), the secretariat will be located at the Commission, a solution less likely to produce conflicts of interest according to MEPs. Nevertheless, the EIB, which will be responsible for managing 75% of the EU's public guarantee, will be able to process its files and transmit them directly to the investment committee without going through the secretariat.
It is a “dual” system, argued one parliamentary source: projects appraised by implementing partners (e.g. national development banks), which will manage 25% of the public guarantee, will go to the secretariat, while the EIB’s projects will be able to go directly to the investment committee.
A ‘steering board’ will be responsible for defining the strategic orientations of the InvestEU fund. Parliament has secured the appointment of an independent expert to sit on it alongside 4 representatives from the Commission, 3 from the EIB and 2 from the national development banks. But this expert should not have voting rights.
Climate change. The extent to which the InvestEU programme is committed to combat climate change was another issue in the discussions.
At least 55% of the investments made in the strategic objective (‘window’) dedicated to sustainable infrastructure must be compatible with the Paris Climate Agreement. The Council of the EU and the Commission were hostile to this objective until the last moment.
The eventual outcome was that the investment ‘scoreboard’ will be determined by a delegated act, a procedure granting equal decision-making power to the Parliament and the Member States.
A trilogue negotiating session will take place this Thursday at technical level to refine the political compromises agreed on Wednesday. The aim is to put the provisional agreement to the vote by MEPs at the April plenary session in Strasbourg. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)