On Thursday 24 October, the European Parliament adopted by a solid majority (511 votes in favour, 64 against, 66 abstentions) the report by Younous Omarjee (GUE/NGL, France) aimed at amending the European Union Solidarity Fund (EUSF) to deal with the consequences of a no-deal Brexit.
The purpose of this proposal is to add the case of a no-deal Brexit to the circumstances listed in the Regulation to trigger a disbursement of the Fund, which, as a reminder, currently only covers financial charges related to natural disasters.
The European Parliament has thus reduced the available appropriations proposed by the European Commission to meet the consequences of a no-deal Brexit from 50% to 30% of the maximum amount available under the Fund's intervention for 2019 and 2020.
They also lowered the threshold for triggering the EUSF. A Member State may apply for assistance from the Fund if the financial burden of a no-deal Brexit is estimated at more than €750 million (at 2011 prices) or more than 0.15% of a Member State's GNI (compared to €1.5 billion or 0.3% of the GNI proposed by the Commission respectively). Assistance from the Fund will be granted to eligible Member States up to a maximum of 10% of the financial burden (compared to 5% in the initial proposal).
MEPs approved the proposal to increase the amount of advances from the Fund from 10 to 25%. It should be noted that this increase does not only concern the case of a hard Brexit, but all the objectives of the Fund. Indeed, the current advances are considered too low to allow sufficient financial assistance to be deployed within the shortest of delays.
It now remains for the EU Council to adopt its position in order to be able to start interinstitutional negotiations with the European Parliament. But the EU Council is waiting to hear the outcome of the talks with London (see other news) before taking a position. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)