Four days after the adoption of the report by Siegfried Mureşan (EPP, Romania), Eider Gardiazabal Rubial (S&D, Spain) and Dragoș Pîslaru (Renew Europe, Romania) on the Recovery and Resilience Facility – the instrument at the heart of the EU's post-Covid-19 Recovery Plan – European Parliament negotiators began negotiations with the EU Council ('trilogues') on Friday 13 November, aiming to reach an agreement on this dossier as soon as possible.
“Because we want this facility to enter into force and people to be helped, we started trilogues immediately this morning”, said Mr Mureşan at a press conference on the same day.
According to our information, this first trilogue was, in particular, an opportunity for the co-legislators to discuss the working method (their intention would be to hold two trilogues per week) and to present their respective positions (see EUROPE 12596/3 et 12578/3).
These diverge on a number of key points, such as the life span of the Facility (4 years for the European Parliament and 3 years for the EU Council), the proportion of national recovery plan allocations that are devoted to the environment (at least 40% in favour of climate and biodiversity for the European Parliament, against 37% in favour of green transition for the EU Council), or the amount of the Facility's budgetary pre-financing (up to 20% for Parliament, compared with 10% for the Council).
Parliament wants to have its say
Another particularly salient point concerns the modalities for approving national recovery and resilience plans.
According to the position taken up by the Member States, these plans and the corresponding financial contributions to be allocated to them should be adopted by the EU Council through an implementing decision on a proposal from the Commission. For their part, MEPs want the European Commission to use a delegated act to ensure they have a say.
“Nowhere in the world is there a budget without the Parliament having approved it”, insisted Mr Mureşan at the press conference, where he pleaded for the European Parliament to be as much involved as the EU Council are in terms of the adoption and implementation of the Facility.
The Romanian also explained that the European Parliament had decided not to propose an exclusion list for certain types of investments (some MEPs and environmental NGOs wanted to exclude investments in fossil fuel projects – see EUROPE 12597/5) in order to give Member States “the flexibility to use money where they believe money is best needed”.
When asked how to ensure that the Facility will be used for a 'green' recovery, Eider Gardiazabal Rubial said that the reference to European taxonomy and the inclusion of a request to the European Commission to develop a methodology that could identify spending on climate and the environment “ensure that we are not talking about ‘greenwashing’”.
Finally, Mr Mureşan explained that his report had not been submitted for the usual vote in plenary session, but instead only to a vote by the members of the Parliamentary Committees on Budgets (BUDG) and Economic Affairs (ECON) (see EUROPE 12599/4) because of their very broad support for the adoption of a mandate to start the trilogues (84 votes in favour, 11 against and 4 abstentions). Moreover, he also said that no political group in Parliament has formally requested a plenary vote.
The second trilogue is scheduled for Tuesday 17 November. (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)