The EU Council’s full negotiating mandate on the proposal for a regulation establishing the Single Neighbourhood, Development Cooperation and International Cooperation Instrument (NDICI) in the future EU budget 2021-2027 puts into action the European Council’s guidelines from 21 July.
As the EU Council has quantified financial envelopes by region and by theme, negotiations with the European Parliament will be able to resume, possibly with some difficulty.
According to this mandate, as seen by EUROPE, the total envelope of the NDICI instrument would be €79.462 billion at current prices, far from the €93.15 billion recommended by the European Parliament.
Geographic pillar. Out of the €60.388 billion envelope for geographic programmes, the neighbourhood would benefit from at least €19.323 billion; sub-Saharan Africa from at least €29.181 billion; and the Americas and Caribbean region from €3.395 billion.
The EU Council points out that the amount of these envelopes reflects the priority the EU gives to the neighbourhood and to sub-Saharan Africa. These are the only two geographical areas to benefit from an increase compared to the 2014-2020 MFF.
Thematic pillar. The EU Council is providing for an envelope of €6.358 billion for the thematic programmes, broken down as follows : - human rights and democracy : €1.362 billion ; - civil society organisations : €1.362 billion; - peace, stability and conflict prevention : €908 million; - global challenges : €2.726 billion; - rapid response actions : €3.182 billion.
The reserve for new challenges and priorities will be €9.534 billion.
Structure of NDICI: the EU Council clarifies that neighbourhood means the European neighbourhood. It mentions that the NDICI instrument is to be used for the implementation of “a modernised association agreement with the ACP.
The European Parliament, on its side, has reduced the reserve to €7 billion and significantly increased the envelope for human rights, civil society and global challenges. It also wants a specific programme for the ACP countries (see EUROPE 12223/7) Original version in French by Aminata Niang)