The Ecofin Council will endorse four more national recovery plans on Monday 26 July at an extraordinary remote ministerial meeting convened by the Slovenian Presidency of the Council of the European Union. The formal approval of these plans in writing will be effective in a few days.
The following countries are concerned:
- Cyprus (decision: https://bit.ly/3x2nPL4 and annex: https://bit.ly/3hVpIVC )
- Croatia (decision: https://bit.ly/3xYzn3k and annex: https://bit.ly/3iya4i9 )
- Lithuania (decision: https://bit.ly/2V8fxE0 and annex: https://bit.ly/3iD7aIO )
- Slovenia (decision: https://bit.ly/36PKfoi and annex: https://bit.ly/3zmDzKv )
The issue was not discussed at the meeting of Member States’ ambassadors to the EU on Thursday 22 July.
On 12 July, the Ecofin Council had already officially approved twelve national plans (see EUROPE 12761/1).
The sixteen Member States concerned will sign financing agreements with the European Commission as a preliminary step to pre-financing their plans.
In addition, the European Commission has already proposed the adoption of the Irish (see EUROPE 12764/15) and Czech (see EUROPE 12765/7) recovery plans. But the timeframe is too short for them to be discussed and adopted by the EU Council before the summer break.
In particular, the European Commission is still assessing the Hungarian (see EUROPE 12760/20) and Polish recovery plans, which are worth €7.2 billion and €23.9 billion respectively (current prices). Although it officially refuses to couple its assessment with other issues related to the Rule of law situation in Hungary and Poland, the EU institution did not meet the two-month deadline set for its assessment of the Hungarian plan.
“The Commission is continuing its assessment and is having constructive discussions with the Hungarian authorities. (...) Our aim is to finalise the evaluation of the plan as soon as possible”, said Veerle Nuyts, a European Commission spokeswoman, on Thursday. “To date, we have not agreed on an extension of the deadline”, she added.
Finally, only the Netherlands and Bulgaria have not yet officially transmitted their recovery plans, due to the lack of a government in place.
Money laundering. On Monday, the Ecofin Council will also discuss the legislative package to strengthen the fight against money laundering, presented on 20 July.
The package includes: - a proposal for a regulation establishing a new European authority dedicated to combating money laundering (see EUROPE 12766/4); - a proposal for a regulation establishing a single set of rules (see EUROPE 12766/5); - a proposal for a sixth ‘anti-money laundering’ directive; - a proposal to recast the Regulation (2015/847) on the traceability of money transfers to extend its scope to crypto-assets.
According to an EU source, however, this is only expected to be a presentation by the European Commission, and not a real discussion.
Among the issues that are likely to be debated among Member States when negotiations begin are the criteria for identifying risk entities that will be subject to direct supervision by the new EU authority and the €10,000 EU limit for cash transactions proposed by the European Commission. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion and Marion Fontana)