MEP José Manuel Fernandes (EPP, Portugal) believes that the modalities of EU support through the Next Generation EU recovery plan, the structural funds, and the InvestEU programme, which replaces the ‘Juncker’ investment plan for the 2021-2027 period, should have been decided at the same time.
As these instruments must be “compatible”, common objectives should have been defined and “how these instruments contribute to them should have been determined”, said the EPP coordinator of the European Parliament’s Committee on Budgets, Thursday 4 March, to EUROPE. “This is especially true for the most fragile countries, which do not have strong national development banks”, he said. For, he stressed, if this funding is used for normal budgetary expenditure, “it would be a lost opportunity for the future”.
The Recovery and Resilience Facility, the budgetary instrument at the heart of Next Generation EU, allows Member States to set aside 4% of their national envelope (grants and loans) to finance the national compartment of the InvestEU programme, whose Interinstitutional Agreement will be approved next week by the European Parliament (see EUROPE 12618/21).
Mr Fernandes pointed out that the InvestEU programme, for which he was co-rapporteur, has four axes for private investment that will benefit from the EU’s public guarantee: - sustainable infrastructure; - research, innovation and digitalisation; - SMEs; - the social sector and skills.
Even if Member States did not want it, “recapitalisations” of solvent SMEs affected by the Covid-19 pandemic will still be possible, he stressed. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)