The European Parliament and the Council of the EU will green and increase the transparency of the Common Provisions Regulation by aligning it with the provisions of the Recovery and Resilience Facility, in an interinstitutional agreement reached during the evening of Thursday 11 February.
“There is a lot of talk about the necessary greening of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). As far as cohesion is concerned, we have achieved its broadest greening ever. And there will be no funding for projects that harm the climate and the Paris Agreement”, Younous Omarjee (The Left, France), the chair of the Parliament’s Committee on Regional Development, told EUROPE.
“Yesterday, we also obtained data which, until now, was lacking to identify - where this is the case - conflicts of interest, fraud, and corruption of the European structural funds. This is an important step forward in the control of funds and transparency”, continued the parliamentarian, recalling that this was also a strong demand from the Budgetary Control Committee.
Thus, the interinstitutional agreement did not deal with the body of the Regulation, which was the subject of a specific agreement at the end of 2020 (see EUROPE 12388/17), but with central technical aspects related to the recitals and annexes of the legislative text. The co-legislators therefore agreed on Annex I listing the different types of eligible investments that can contribute to the EU’s climate objectives.
One third of the total funding under the structural funds will have to contribute to the EU climate target, compared to 37% under the provisions of the Recovery and Resilience Facility, the budgetary instrument at the heart of the Next Generation EU recovery plan.
In addition, the co-legislators, after 6 hours of tough negotiations, have strengthened the list of data to be recorded by managing authorities and beneficiaries of European financial aid. This information will be made available to the European Commission, the European Court of Auditors, and OLAF. Notably, Parliament and the EU Council have included identification numbers for contractors and subcontractors, something which some Member States were reluctant to do.
In addition, the co-legislators have increased harmonisation and interoperability between the different funds, as well as with the financial instruments of the CAP.
At the moment, the timetable for translation and the verification work of the lawyer-linguists is still unclear. The aim is to have the regulation adopted by the EU Council before the summer. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)