Negotiators from the European Parliament and the EU Council of the European Union will continue the inter-institutional negotiations, Tuesday 15 December starting at 4 p.m., on the proposal for a Regulation establishing the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF), the budgetary instrument at the heart of the Next Generation EU Recovery Plan (EUROPE 12601/19). An agreement as early as Tuesday cannot be ruled out after the European Council lifted the blockade by Poland and Hungary on the post-2020 EU budget (see EUROPE 12622/11).
Several questions remain unanswered. According to the Member States, the duration of the Recovery Plan should be concentrated over three years, between 2021 and 2023, while MEPs advocate a four-year period, from 2021 to 2024.
Another stumbling block is the amount of pre-financing for the RRF, which, according to Parliament, should be higher than 10%. However, the Commission and the Member States are of the opinion that some countries do not have the institutional capacity to absorb such large amounts of funding very quickly.
Another issue to be discussed is the possibility of using the Facility to finance other Community programmes. According to a parliamentary source, the agreement reached on the InvestEU programme is likely to show the way forward (see EUROPE 12618/21).
Last but not least, MEPs continue to call for a decision-making role for Parliament in adopting national recovery plans in the form of delegated acts, whereas Member States want to retain this exclusive competence through the adoption of implementing acts.
Asked by EUROPE last week, one MEP said Parliament would not win on this issue.
The solution being worked out in the inter-institutional negotiating box on the Technical Support Instrument (TSI) - due to conclude on Tuesday morning - could also show the way, according to the source. In this case, Parliament would have accepted the principle of implementing acts. This instrument should provide guidance to Member States on how to prepare their national recovery plans.
The German EU Council Presidency was contacted and had not responded to our requests by the time we went to press. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)