After emergency consultation, the European Parliament should approve without much difficulty, on Wednesday 23 November, granting new macrofinancial assistance (MFA+) to Ukraine of up to €18 billion for the whole of 2023 and in the form of highly preferential loans (10-year grace period, assumption of interest estimated at €600 million per year from 2024) (see EUROPE 13064/3).
During Wednesday’s plenary debate, representatives of the main political groups - EPP, S&D, Renew Europe, Greens/EFA, ECR - supported the Commission’s proposal. Margarida Marques (S&D, Portuguese) said, “where there is a will, there is a way!”. By amending the 2021-2027 Multiannual Financial Framework to have a sufficient budgetary margin to provide a public guarantee for the loans, the EU is breaking “a taboo” on how to finance such operations, she said.
However, some MEPs regretted that the European Parliament’s role as a budgetary authority had been undermined by the very short deadlines for examining the texts on the table.
“We in the Council feel the same way, but we trust the European Parliament to rise to the challenge”, said Czech Minister for European Affairs Mikuláš Bek on behalf of the EU Council Presidency. The formal adoption of the aid could take place at the Ecofin Council on Tuesday 6 December.
Like several MEPs, Jan Van Overtveldt (ECR, Belgian) stressed the importance of “closely monitoring how these funds are spent”. Ivan Vilibor Sinčić (NI, Croatian) wondered where the financial aid to the Ukrainian authorities had gone.
Among the few sceptical MEPs, Joachim Kuhs (ID, German) expressed “very serious doubts” about injecting such sums of money into a very “corrupt” State.
On behalf of the European Commission, Virginijus Sinkevičius recalled that a memorandum of understanding (MoU) would be negotiated and signed with the Ukrainian authorities in order to spell out the conditions for the granting of the assistance, such as the respect of democratic standards. “Implementing reforms in a country at war is not an easy task”, he also noted.
Fears of the European Court of Auditors. In an opinion published on Tuesday, the European Court of Auditors does not oppose head-on the use of the margin between commitment and payment appropriations in the EU budget to finance the EU’s new macrofinancial assistance to Ukraine.
It notes, however, that this financing technique will place the risk of borrower default on future EU budgets, whereas macrofinancial assistance operations are usually financed through provisions in current budgets.
“Lending to Ukraine might involve relatively high risks for the EU budget”, it notes.
See the opinion of the European Court of Auditors: https://aeur.eu/f/47u (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)