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The European Commission will no longer present, as expected, the recovery plan of the European Union this Wednesday, May 6, due to the difficulty of Ursula von der Leyen to obtain the support of the capitals, Business learned from community sources. .
Commission President Von der Leyen canceled the meeting scheduled for Tuesday with the leaders of the European Parliament’s parliamentary groups, during which the main aspects of the recovery plan will be discussed.
Given the divergences within the Council regarding the ambition of the European response, von der Leyen started talks with Member States fighting for more minimalist action, namely the Netherlands, Austria, Sweden, Denmark and Finland. However, as Business knows, this process has taken a long time and has not been completed, and those capitals persist in the requirement that the money from the recovery fund be given to the countries through loans associated with conditions.
It should be recalled that, as revealed by the Portuguese Prime Minister, António Costa, there is a large majority of Member States that defend a model based on non-reimbursable subsidies, while, for example, Germany defends the combination of both forms. The delay in the negotiation of Von der Leyen confirms the difficulty in ensuring the unity sought by Brussels.
Von der Leyen has already internally broadcast that the Commission’s plan will be presented on May 13 or 20, however, an EU source told Businesses that neither of these dates is taken for granted, and Brussels’ intention to give it up. to know is safer. plan during this month.
This same source reminds us that there are several conditions that threaten to delay a process that we want to accelerate. Its objective is to increase the maximum limit of own resources to 2% within the scope of the recovery fund in response to Covid-19, however, such change requires not only the unanimity of the 27 European leaders, but the ratification of each of national parliaments. In other words, it is a long process that can stop the existence of the recovery fund as early as 2020.
Despite having approved the package of measures agreed in the Eurogroup that will guarantee 540 billion euros for the protection of the Member States, employment and companies, the EU would like to have the economic recovery fund on the ground in 2020 and not only in 2021, when should the new MFP enter into force, an intention far from being guaranteed
Is that after approximately two years of stagnation in the new EU budget, the division between the “frugal” who want to set national contributions to 1% of community wealth and the block of Member States requesting a reinforcement of contributions for an ambitious and uncut cohesion budget.
As such, on Monday the budget committee of the European Parliament asked the Commission to present a contingency plan to avoid the possibility of reaching January 1 without 2021 without an operational MFP.
At the end of the May 23 European Council, António Costa said that the European Commission had the mandate, until May 6, to present a new proposal for the next long-term EU budget, which already frames the recovery fund economic.
At that meeting, European leaders agreed that this recovery fund will be financed through the issuance of debt by the Commission, based on the guarantees of the Member States, but they did not reach an agreement on how this money could be distributed to each of the countries. .
Conference on the future of Europe postponed
The Union’s executive body has also postponed the holding of the Conference on the Future of Europe, scheduled to start on May 9 and last for two years.
Through this initiative, the European Commission wanted to work on the new priorities of the team led by Von der Leyen, in particular climate change and energy and digital transitions.
Another pillar of this conference is the deepening of problems related to democratic processes within the European bloc, namely the transnational lists of candidates for the European Parliament.
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