31 Amendments of Bronis ROPĖ related to 2016/2302(INI)
Amendment 4 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital -A (new)
Recital -A (new)
-A. whereas financial engineering instruments have been introduced at a late stage of the adoption of the 2007- 2013 legislative package for Cohesion Policy leaving managing authorities largely without preparation to consider them in their operational programmes; whereas, as a consequence, the Commission stepped-up its support scheme for those authorities through awareness raising and by providing guidance and advisory services;
Amendment 5 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital -A a (new)
Recital -A a (new)
-Aa. whereas the co-legislators agreed on additional provisions governing financial instruments for the legislative framework 2014-2020 in view of extending their scope and clarifying concepts, responsibilities and procedures thus responding to legal uncertainties generated during the 2007-2013 period;
Amendment 6 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital -A b (new)
Recital -A b (new)
-Ab. whereas experience in the use and implementation of financial instruments to date is mixed, and a comprehensive assessment of their results and achievements is pending;
Amendment 7 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital A a (new)
Recital A a (new)
Aa. whereas delays in implementation of the 2014-2020 period may not yet allow to draw substantiated conclusions on the functioning and effectiveness of the new provisions on financial instruments; whereas the Commission already proposes modifications to the rules in force without an impact assessment;
Amendment 15 #
Draft opinion
Recital C a (new)
Recital C a (new)
C a. Whereas although some argue that financial instruments should in particular be used in less-developed regions in order to help unlock their development potential, in reality the appetite for private sector engagement is rather low due to the lack of bankable projects in these regions;
Amendment 28 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 1
Paragraph 1
1. WelcomNotes the Commission’s reporting exercise, which provides strong evidence that European Structural and Investment (ESI) Funds investment through grants and financial instruments resulted in solid impact and visible results by investments in EU regions, which amounted to EUR 347.6 billion, excluding national co- financing and additionally leveraged resources; Considers that obligations for reporting on grants or financial instruments differ widely thus unnecessarily increasing administrative burden for ESIF beneficiaries;
Amendment 32 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 2 a (new)
Paragraph 2 a (new)
2 a. Notes the harsh financial situation farmers find themselves in as food prices have been kept low unlike prices in all other sectors of the economy;
Amendment 33 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 2 a (new)
Paragraph 2 a (new)
2 a. Particularly notes that farmers' average annual incomes in the EU have remained unchanged, or in some cases have declined, over the past 10 years, compared to continuously increasing production costs and an increase in farm debt;
Amendment 34 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 2 b (new)
Paragraph 2 b (new)
2 b. Calls therefore upon the Commission and the Member States to take seriously the need for remunerative prices for produce;
Amendment 39 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 2 b (new)
Paragraph 2 b (new)
2 b. Questions the proposed reliance on loans in a climate of extreme debt amongst farmers, who often stand little chance of paying off that debt;
Amendment 41 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 2 c (new)
Paragraph 2 c (new)
2 c. Notes also long-running pressure in the farming sector to 'grow or perish'; expresses concern that 2.4 million farms in the EU disappeared between 2005 and 2010, most of which are small farmers, and the resulting disappearance of a large number of jobs in rural areas;
Amendment 60 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 4 a (new)
Paragraph 4 a (new)
4 a. Reaffirms the difference between public funds being used for public goods or benefits for whole communities or society as a whole on one hand, and investment in infrastructure on private holdings on the other;
Amendment 61 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 4 b (new)
Paragraph 4 b (new)
4 b. Considers that loans are not appropriate for certain types of rural development measures for example where whole communities benefit, as in CLLD (community led local development) or LEADER approaches, or society in general benefits, as in agri-environmental measures;
Amendment 62 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 4 c (new)
Paragraph 4 c (new)
4 c. Notes the difference between larger scale infrastructure projects financed by the structural and cohesion funds on one hand, and smaller scale investments and grants made to improve 'soft' infrastructure on the other, e.g. bringing soils back to life; notes that the smaller investments can be equally if not more effective and less costly and that this approach has been adopted in other related fields of expenditure such as development aid and flood defences;
Amendment 65 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 5
Paragraph 5
5. Calls for them to be implemented in such a way that they can support collective projects geared to financing basic infrastructure in the field of irrigation, transport, processing, marketing and forestry development, withand, in addition, agricultural product marketing measures carried out by farmers and their cooperatives, to that end using maturity- based financial instruments that reflect the actual economic position for each project.
Amendment 72 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 5
Paragraph 5
5. Calls for them to be implemented in such a way that they can support collective projects geared to financing basic infrastructure in the field of irrigation, transport, processing, marketing and forestry development, with maturity-based financial instruments that reflect the actual economic position for each project.; notes however the administrative complexity involved in making loans to and collecting debt from a collective or group of farmers, and so urges a streamlined, simplified approach; finds that if the loan approach is too complex, awarding grants to collectives may be more appropriate;
Amendment 73 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 5 a (new)
Paragraph 5 a (new)
5 a. Criticises the fact that loans are provided in developing and transition countries using EU public-private funds via the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, International Finance Institutions and Export Credit Agencies of EU Member States for animal housing which is not in line with EU rules and higher animal welfare standards1a _________________ 1a ref: http://www.hsi.org/assets/pdfs/investments -in-suffering.pdf
Amendment 76 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 5 b (new)
Paragraph 5 b (new)
5 b. Considers that, rather than reducing evaluation obligations by authorities, we need additional data to be gathered and analysis to be carried out to justify the use of financial instruments and to prevent their undetermined and 'blank-check' use;
Amendment 77 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 5 a (new)
Paragraph 5 a (new)
5 a. Stresses that improving significantly the evidence base must be a pre-requisite for promoting or even requesting an increased use of financial instruments;
Amendment 78 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 5 c (new)
Paragraph 5 c (new)
5 c. Considers that the leverage effect of financial instruments, which is regularly used as key argument in their favour, is often lower than estimated;
Amendment 79 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 5 b (new)
Paragraph 5 b (new)
5 b. Believes that the supposed greater extent to which financial instruments mobilise private capital is often overstated and that in many cases the leverage effect of grants is not much lower than that of financial instruments;
Amendment 81 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 10
Paragraph 10
10. Recalls that the positivemixed experience of using financial instruments in the 2007- 2013 programming period was accompanied by a number of 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;
Amendment 83 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 10 a (new)
Paragraph 10 a (new)
10a. Is concerned of the challenges relating to the leverage effect of financial instruments; considers that the Commission should base its methodology for calculating leverage on methodologies used by international organisations such as the OECD in order to provide for a more robust benchmark;
Amendment 113 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 12
Paragraph 12
12. Notes the significant differences across the EU regarding the penetration of financial instruments, including ESI Funds and the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI); emphasises that the overall success of such instruments depends on how they are designed in order to achieve results contributing to smart, sustainable and inclusive growth, how easy they are to use and the ability of the Member States to manage investments through them;
Amendment 126 #
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 make access to ESI Funds microcredit, loans, guarantees, equity and venture capital as easy as using grants while ensuring the same level of transparency, reporting and control;
Amendment 131 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 14 a (new)
Paragraph 14 a (new)
14a. Expresses concern about the finding of audit works that the use of financial instruments facilitates bypassing the automatic de-commitment rule, as Cohesion Policy resources can be parked in financial instruments instead of being invested in the real economy;
Amendment 135 #
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 facilitating 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, when grants are combined with financial instruments, the highest risk-taking tranche shall be covered by the financial instrument;
Amendment 140 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 15 a (new)
Paragraph 15 a (new)
15a. Insists on maintaining or increasing democratic scrutiny over financial instruments; rejects any sort of simplification which reduces reporting, control or audit standards without safeguarding availability and public access to information;
Amendment 150 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 17 a (new)
Paragraph 17 a (new)
17a. Is convinced that the use of grants or financial instruments has to be based on evidence relating to their thematic orientation, targets set and results achieved; Insists that equal standards should apply to and success should be measured with the same set of indicators for both forms of support; Considers that the disbursement rate is not sufficient for assessing the effectiveness of financial instruments; Urges the Commission to provide for an equal reporting framework which also allows to generate much- needed evidence;
Amendment 152 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 17 b (new)
Paragraph 17 b (new)
17b. Considers that a level playing field needs to be provided for grants and financial instruments without giving certain privileges to one of them which may put disadvantages on the other one;
Amendment 157 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 18 a (new)
Paragraph 18 a (new)
18a. Considers of utmost importance that both forms of support meet the requirement to be accountable to the public interest and be bound to policy priorities and objectives; rejects any form of dominance of financial market interests;