Activities of Georgi PIRINSKI related to 2016/2302(INI)
Plenary speeches (1)
The right funding mix for Europe’s regions: balancing financial instruments and grants in EU cohesion policy - Future perspectives for technical assistance in cohesion policy (debate) BG
Amendments (11)
Amendment 27 #
1. WelcomNotes the Commission’'s reporting exercise, which provides strong evidence that European Structural and Investment (ESI)Funds and the Cohesion Funds investment through grants and financial instruments resulted in solid impact andin certain cases through financial instruments led to visible results by investments in EU regions, which amounted to EUR 347.6 billion, excluding national co-financing and additionally leveraged resources;
Amendment 30 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 2
Paragraph 2
2. WelcomNotes the existing European Investment Bank (EIB) Cohesion Policy operations visible in annual reports and sector reports, revealing the impact oinvestments in SMEs and mid-caps, infrastructure, research and innovation, the environment, energy and agriculture; concludobserves that EIB lending in support of Cohesion Policy for the period 2007-2013 is estimated at EUR 147 billion, which represents roughly 38 % of all lending in the EU, regrets, however, the lack of information in the EIB reports about results achieved through such investments in the cohesion policy area;
Amendment 42 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 4
Paragraph 4
4. Acknowledges that both the volume and the quality of financial instruments (in the form of microcredit, loans, guarantees, equity and venture capital) under Cohesion Policy’'s shared management increased reaching EUR 21,5 billion or 4,7 % of the total ESIF envelope; highlights the two mainsome of the reasons for this trend – the 2007-2013 period provided valuable experience and lessons regarding ESI Funds implementation through grants and financial instruments, while the 2014- 2020 MFF reflects the post-crisis need for more financial instruments owing to fiscal limitationsimposed austerity;
Amendment 53 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 5 a (new)
Paragraph 5 a (new)
5a. Notes with concern that the expected leverage of ESIF supported financial instruments is comparatively low taking into account the existing liquidity in European banks. Calls on the Commission and on the Member States to ensure that public funds are used in the best interest of final beneficiaries;
Amendment 60 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 7
Paragraph 7
7. Recognises that grants have somevarious strengths as compared to financial instruments: supporting projects that do not necessarily generate revenue, providing funding to projects that for various reasons cannot attract private or public funding, targeting specific beneficiaries, issues and regional priorities, and lower complexity of use owing to existing experience and capacity; acknowledges that in some cases grants are bound to limitations: difficulties in achieving project quality and sustainability, risk of substituting public funding in the long-run and a crowding-out effect for potential private investment even when projects may have a revolving nature;
Amendment 74 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 9
Paragraph 9
9. Highlights that intervention logic is not a dividing line but a meeting point of grants and financial instruments so that Cohesion Policy can ensure better coverage of beneficiaries and investment gaps through a variety of measures; points out that intervention logic is a bottom-up approach in ESI Funds programming and that Member States should continue setting the share of financial instruments in respective operational programmes when and where appropriate;
Amendment 76 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 10
Paragraph 10
10. Recalls that the positive experience of using financial instruments in the 2007- 2013 programming period was accompanied by a number of troublesome performance issues: late start of operations, inaccurate market assessment, diverging regional uptake, overall low disbursement rates, low leverage effect, problematic revolving, high management costs and fees and inadequately large endowments; notes with concern that almost in the middle of the current programming period only around 20% of the amounts committed to financial instruments have been paid into the instruments; calls on the Commission to take urgent measures in order to avoid the repetition of the same problems accompanying the financial instruments in the previous programming period;
Amendment 111 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 12
Paragraph 12
12. Notes with concern the significant differences across the EU regarding the penetration of financial instruments, including ESI Funds and the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI); calls for urgent and concrete proposals by the Commission to the Council and to the European Parliament aimed at effectively overcoming the existing concentration of projects supported by EFSI and other EU funded financial instruments in the Union's top performing economies thus undermining the objectives of Cohesion Policy; emphasises that the overall success of such instruments depends on how easy they are to use and the ability of the Member States to manage investments through them;
Amendment 123 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 13
Paragraph 13
13. Welcomes the Commission’'s actions in optimising regulation; emphasises that, despite the improvements, complexity still exists and issues such as the long set-up time and the administrative burden for recipients are disincentives to use financial instruments; calls on the Commission to work closely with the EIB and the EIF to makease access to ESI Funds microcredit, loans, guarantees, equity and venture capital as easy as using grants;
Amendment 134 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 15
Paragraph 15
15. Points out that combining grants and financial instruments has unexplored potential; emphasises that alongside guidance to authorities, further harmonisation is needed for the rules that concern combining different ESI Funds, as well as for the rules that concern combining the ESI Funds with instruments such as Horizon 2020 and EFSI; calls for easing the regulatory burden by facilitatingbetter regulation as regard the above- mentioned combining of allocations from more than one programme to the same financial instrument, as well as enabling combinations of microfinance instruments in ESF operations; calls for further promotion of combining grants with financial instruments; stresses that grant components can be used as a first loss piece and can therefore make the funding structure more attractive to beneficiaries and private sector investors;
Amendment 155 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 18
Paragraph 18
18. Recognises that both grants and financial instruments have their specific roles in Cohesion Policy butand that they sharould explicitly have the same focus pursued by the 11 thematic objectives, which is to achieve the five headline targets of the Europe 2020 strategy;