The Member States’ Ambassadors to the European Union (Coreper) agreed by qualified majority on Friday 9 October on their negotiating position with the European Parliament on the proposal for a Regulation introducing the Recovery and Resilience Facility, the budgetary instrument at the heart of the Recovery Plan.
On Tuesday, at the ‘Ecofin’ Council, we noted the existence of a qualified majority of Member States, and the text submitted on Friday to the national delegations is “unchanged”, according to a European diplomat just before the Coreper meeting.
Negotiations with the European Parliament will start once the latter has adopted its negotiating position, probably in November. For MEPs, investment and spending under the European Recovery Plan must have real added value (see EUROPE 12551/11). Parliament is also calling for a say in the approval of national recovery plans. For the Member States, this competence should, on the contrary, remain with the EU Council.
The legislative text describes the operation of the EUR 750 billion Facility (EUR 390 billion in grants, EUR 360 billion in loans). It sets the minimum investment thresholds for the environmental and digital transitions at 37% and 20% respectively.
See the text of the agreement: https://bit.ly/30P9iFe (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)