“Deal! We have a deal!”, tweeted the MEPs responsible for negotiating the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) for the 2021-2027 period with the EU Council on Thursday 10 March in the evening.
This programme, which aims to finance infrastructure projects in the fields of transport, energy, and digital technology, will therefore be renewed with a budget of EUR 33.71 billion (current prices).
The long-awaited agreement on this text (see EUROPE 12620/15) - which still needs to be given the official green light by the European Parliament and the EU Council - should make it possible to launch the first calls for grants “before the summer break”, welcomed the Portuguese Minister for Infrastructure, Pedro Nuno Santos.
EUR 25.81 billion will be allocated to transport projects to complete the TEN-T network. Of this amount, EUR 11.29 billion will be reserved for cohesion policy countries and EUR 1.69 billion for military mobility.
EUR 5.84 billion will then be allocated to projects in the energy sector, which must be consistent with national energy and climate plans (see EUROPE 12563/16).
The remaining EUR 2.06 billion will go to digital projects, which should make “a significant contribution” to the implementation of the Digital Single Market and to the EU’s strategic connectivity goals.
Sticking points
Five hours of discussions on Thursday enabled the co-legislators to agree on two provisions that had so far remained problematic.
The first concerned the decision taken unilaterally by EU leaders in July to allocate part of the ‘transport’ envelope to the Rail Baltica rail link project, connecting the three Baltic States (see EUROPE 12643/19).
It was finally agreed that EUR 1.56 billion would indeed be “used for the completion of missing major cross-border rail links between Member States eligible for funding from the Cohesion Fund”, an EU source confirmed to EUROPE. The maximum cofinancing rates for these projects must not exceed 85% of the total eligible costs.
“Thanks to the Portuguese and German Presidencies (of the EU Council) for safeguarding the deal reached by the leaders!”; this agreement “is a major achievement. Let us now turn to completing Rail Baltica”, the Latvian ambassador to the EU and Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas reacted respectively on Twitter.
The second sticking point was the allocation key for the EUR 11.29 billion envelope for the cohesion countries. The agreed text seems to be closer to the EU Council’s original position. In the end, it provides that 30% of this envelope be made available to these States on a competitive basis, giving priority to “cross-border links and missing links”.
The remaining 70% will be allocated according to the distribution of national allocations received by the States under the Cohesion Fund, until 31 December 2023. Any uncommitted resources will then be made available to all Member States concerned. There is also a new provision to ensure that, until 31 December 2025, the total amount allocated to a State’s projects will not exceed 170% of that country’s share of the Cohesion Fund.
Climate action
Parliament’s rapporteurs, Dominique Riquet (Renew Europe, France), Marian Marinescu (EPP, Romania), and Henna Virkkunen (EPP, Finland), welcomed the adoption of a financial tool that is “more necessary than ever” to create jobs and support the recovery of the European economy, as well as to support the digital and environmental transitions.
Sixty percent of the new CEF’s total budget will have to be devoted to projects contributing to European climate objectives.
This is a positive point for the chair of Parliament’s ‘Transport’ Committee, Karima Delli (Greens/EFA, France), and her group, who however regret that, overall, the direction and categories of expenditure are not in line with the commitments of the European Green Deal. (Original version in French by Agathe Cherki)