The President of the European Parliament, David Sassoli, and the Portuguese Prime Minister, António Costa, on Friday 12 February signed the regulation establishing the Recovery and Resilience Facility, the €672.5 billion budgetary instrument (€312.5 billion in grants and €360 billion in loans) at the heart of the Next Generation EU Recovery Plan (see EUROPE 12626/1).
“We have vaccines to save lives and a vitamin to boost the economic recovery”, said Mr Costa, on behalf of the Portuguese Presidency of the Council of the European Union. He called on Member States to speed up national ratifications of the Own Resources Decision for the EU budget. It will be done “at the end of March, beginning of April”, he hoped.
Once this step is completed, the Commission will be able to borrow on the markets on behalf of the EU27 and pay initial aid to Member States to finance their respective recovery plans. According to its President, Ursula von der Leyen, this will be possible by early summer.
Member States have until the end of April to formally submit their national plans to the Commission, although preliminary discussions are already under way to facilitate the subsequent adoption of the national plans by the Council of the EU (see EUROPE 12653/10).
Mr Costa said in particular that the Portuguese recovery plan was being finalised and that it would be subject to a national debate before being sent to the Commission within “3 weeks” (see EUROPE 12631/2). The reforms contained in the Portuguese plan are faithfully inspired by the country-specific recommendations for 2019 and 2020 that the European level has addressed to Portugal, he stressed.
“Next Generation EU is more than money. It is a strong message of solidarity, trust!”, proclaimed the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, convinced that no EU country would have been able to tackle the health and economic crisis alone because of the “deeply integrated” nature of the single market.
Guidance on the ‘do no significant harm’ principle
On Friday, as required by the Regulation establishing the Facility, the Commission also published new guidelines to help Member States justify the investments and reforms they intend to implement in the framework of the European Recovery Plan under the ‘do no significant harm’ principle.
Derived from the European regulation on sustainable finance taxonomy (see EUROPE 12392/14), this principle makes it possible to identify activities that cause significant damage with regard to six environmental objectives, such as reducing greenhouse gas emissions, preserving freshwater and marine resources, limiting the production and incineration of waste, reducing emissions of polluting particles into the air, water or soil, and preserving biodiversity.
The European institution asks Member States to justify, either through a simplified procedure or a more detailed procedure, that each investment project or structural reform listed in their national plan does not have a significantly damaging impact on the environment, throughout the cycle of activity resulting from a measure. Projects and reforms “in the energy, transport, waste management and industry sectors” are likely to have to go through the detailed procedure, she stresses.
According to the Commission, electrification projects in the industrial, transport and construction sectors are allowed, even though electricity generation is not a climate-neutral activity.
On the other hand, electricity and/or heat production projects using fossil fuels “should not” comply with the ‘do no significant harm’ principle as soon as a cleaner alternative exists, according to the European institution, even if this does not exclude “limited exceptions” and “on a case-by-case basis” for projects using natural gas. This applies, for example, to Member States that have historically used carbon-intensive energy sources such as coal, lignite or oil. Nevertheless, the Commission expects compensation measures to avoid a “lock-in effect” resulting from the choice of polluting technology for long-term projects.
See the guidelines on the ‘do no significant harm’ principle: https://bit.ly/3tL1j94 (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)