The Director General of the European Commission’s services for Regional and Urban Policy, Marc Lemaître, said he wanted Member States to take full advantage of the CARE initiative to respond to the massive influx of Ukrainian refugees fleeing the Russian invasion, during an exchange with MEPs from the Committee on Regional Development (REGI) on Tuesday 15 March. However, he said that he does not rule out possible initiatives by his institution.
Almost all MEPs, across all political groups, welcomed the recent announcements and the responsiveness of the European Commission (see EUROPE 12906/6).
Many, however, such as the REGI Committee Chair, Younous Omarjee (The Left, France), Pascal Arimont (EPP, Belgium), Constanze Krehl (S&D, Germany) or Susana Solís Pérez (Renew Europe, Spain) said that the proposals presented might not be enough, given the duration and scale of the phenomenon, and that further action might be needed.
They all wanted to know how much money was available in the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and the European Social Fund (ESF) 2014-2021. A possible amendment of the Cohesion Policy 2021-2027 was mentioned by Ms Pérez. Jan Olbrycht (EPP, Poland) wondered whether the partnership agreements already sent and those in preparation should be revised to take account of the long-term humanitarian consequences of the war.
Marc Lemaître was cautious. He said that several Member States whose infrastructure projects are affected by the Russian-Ukrainian conflict had asked his services to extend the payment period by one year for the 2014-2020 cohesion policy, which would bring the programmes to a close in 2024.
For him, this is not the right approach. On the contrary, Member States should map the projects in difficulty in order to reprogramme them under the Cohesion Policy 2021-2027 so that the money still unspent can be used to respond to the refugee crisis.
Similarly, he clearly rejected suggestions to amend the regulatory framework for the Cohesion Policy 2021-2027. In his opinion, such a proposal could lead to an imbalance between the short and long term objectives of cohesion policy.
Throughout his speech, the senior official strove to demonstrate the potential of the European Commission’s proposals. He indicated in his opening remarks that the 100% co-financing rate, which had been widely used in the framework of the second CRII+ package (providing around €13 billion in the 2020-2021 accounting year), should bring a “net effect” of €10 billion (of which €3 billion are earmarked to help the regions bordering Ukraine), if it is used in the same proportions by the Member States in the 2021-2022 accounting year.
The senior official explained that he wanted to spread the impact on the EU budget over time, with half of this amount being paid to Member States “probably as early as September”. The remainder would be paid over the years 2023 and 2024.
React-EU to the rescue
On the possibilities of reprogramming, he emphasised React-EU and its €50 billion of “new money”. He indicated that, admittedly, the Member States had reprogrammed the €40 billion for the 2021 tranche. “But most of this money has not yet been used”, he added, opening the possibility of using some of it to address the refugee crisis.
He also said that the remaining €10 billion for the 2022 tranche of React-EU for “the vast majority of Member States” had not even been programmed into concrete programmes yet, “which means that the purpose of this money is yet to be determined”.
For the Cohesion Policy 2014-2020, the situation is less clear, but the poor performers could potentially be the better off, paradoxically. “If you look at the implementation ranking, we have a partial coincidence (of the frontline Member States - editor’s note) of relatively weaker implementation and, therefore, still some margin in two of the four border Member States”, continued Marc Lemaître. He assured that each Member State still had several hundred million euros at its disposal.
However, he sought not to close the door on the demands and concerns of his audience. “What I can assure you is that the Commission is not going to settle now for its CARE proposal”, he said.
Younous Omarjee in favour of a NGEU 2
Contacted by EUROPE, Younous Omarjee, said that he agreed with Mr Lemaître’s words, recalling that the implementation of the Cohesion Policy 2021-2027 will hardly start before 2023. “There will then be time to discuss possible changes at that time”, he said, before recalling that the new cohesion policy already had instruments to react to major crises.
However, for the Chair of the REGI Committee, European action will clearly have to step up and go beyond cohesion policy. “For me, we need a NGEU 2 (referring to the Next Generation EU recovery and resilience plan - editor’s note)”, he stressed in a personal capacity, to respond to a crisis that is likely to last for a long time.
The text is expected to go through the urgency procedure, similar to the vote on the CRII and CRII+ initiatives during the Covid-19 pandemic, a source told us. The agenda of the next mini-plenary is expected to be changed to hold a vote directly in plenary without amending the proposal.
On the EU Council side, Member States’ ambassadors to the EU will reportedly support the European Commission’s proposal at the Committee of Permanent Representatives II meeting on Wednesday 16 March. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)