MEPs approved, on Tuesday 4 October, the FAST-CARE initiative at the European Parliament’s plenary session in Strasbourg. The text was adopted without amendments, with 592 votes in favour, 12 against and 10 abstentions.
FAST-CARE, proposed by the European Commission, relaxes the rules for the use of cohesion funds in order to address the migration challenges related to the war in Ukraine (see EUROPE 12982/19). The European Parliament’s Committee on Regional Development (REGI) had already given its approval through a simplified procedure in September (see EUROPE 13022/29). Adopted in the EU Council, the legislation must now be formally approved by the Member States, before entering into force the day after its publication in the Official Journal of the European Union.
Half-hearted enthusiasm
Niklas Nienaß (Greens/EFA, German), rapporteur, expressed unequivocal support for the proposal... but with mixed enthusiasm. While recognising the need to act quickly to mitigate the consequences of war, he stressed once again that emergency management should not become the new “modus operandi”. “It is, though, the fifth time within two years to finance an emergency tool out of the funds of EU regional development”, he said. Indeed, cohesion funds have been used in previous support measures in the context of the war (CARE and CARE+ - see EUROPE 12918/7), but also in the context of the pandemic (CRII and CRII+ - see EUROPE 12469/5, 12472/11).
He said that cohesion policy should “stick to its long-term strategic objectives” and called on the Commission to find new funding lines for crises. “I call on the Commission that if it were to propose another emergency measure, I would ask you to provide also a plan on how to solve the issues in the long run, how to fade out from the emergency tools legislation and how to finance them without jeopardising our future”, he concluded.
See the adopted text: https://aeur.eu/f/3dp (Original version in French by Hélène Seynaeve)