Activities of Ignazio Roberto MARINO related to 2024/0275(COD)
Shadow opinions (1)
Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council RESTORE – Regional Emergency Support to Reconstruction amending Regulation (EU) 2021/1058 and Regulation (EU) 2021/1057
Amendments (10)
Amendment 1 #
Recital A
A. whereas the proposal does not modify existing budgetary commitments and remains within the limits of the overall allocations for the period 2021-2027 and is therefore budgetary neutral;
Amendment 2 #
Recital B
B. whereas the combined effect of 30% pre-financing, 100 % co-financing and the eligibility for physically completed or fully implemented operations as of 1st of January 2024 under the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and European Social Fund Plus (ESF+), while taking into account the cap for re- programming of 10 % of the total 2021- 2027 allocation, leads to a partial frontloading of payment appropriations, followed by lower payments at a later stage:
Amendment 3 #
Paragraph 1
1,. Recalls that the European Parliament has repeatedly called for more resources for response to natural disasters and in particular the European Union Solidarity Fund (EUSF) in view of the increasing number and intensity of natural disasters in particular linked to climate change and the need to speed-up procedures so that support reaches Member States and regions hit by natural disasters more quickly; notes that the RESTORE proposal provides additional assistanceopportunities and further flexibility to Member States affected by natural disasters for the use of their cohesion policy programmes 2021-2027 to respond to such disasters; regrets that cohesion policy is again used as an emergency response tool and maintains that this approach risks undermining its longer-term policy and investment objectives and is a symptom of a lack of flexibility and crisis response capacity in the EU budget; acknowledges, however, that the present proposal offers a pragmatic solution to deal with insufficient budgetary flexibility and crisis response capacity in the EU budget, in order to provide a fast response to the needs of the affected populations;
Amendment 5 #
Paragraph 3
3. Notes further that for 2025 the Commission proposes additional payment appropriations for ERDF of a total of EUR 3 000 million through the amending letter (AL); refers to the estimated payment needs in 2025 of a total amount of EUR 3 000 million in the RESTORE proposal, of which EUR 2 070 million for ERDF and EUR 930 million for ESF+; regrets the inconsistency of figures between the AL and the Legislative Financial Statement and urges the Commission to provide for coherent information and rectification, where necessary; is of the opinion that the estimate (whichever is the actual one) does not take into account that there is some retroactive eligibility, that means that clearly the increased payments will not only go to pre-financing and does not take into account the possibility of delays with the opening of the negotiations of the programs as well as the fact that at this date the Commission does not have any estimates on initial take-up of the proposal by Member States, let alone the potential volumes of the program amendments and therefore is very difficult to assess and there is a likelihood that this will therefore need to be corrected in an amending budget;
Amendment 7 #
Paragraph 5
5. Requests the Commission to provide for traceable information in the form of timely reports including on transfers referred to in Article 26 of Regulation (EU) 2021/1060 to ERDF and ESF+ and on payment forecasts for cohesion policy programmes 2021-2027 to make the impact of RESTORE clearly identifiable for the budgetary authority;
Amendment 10 #
Paragraph 7
7. Notes that payments to 2021-2027 cohesion policy programmes were on a very low level in the first years of implementation leading to an increase of payment needs towards the later years; recalls that this actual payment cycle does not co-incide with the more linear payment profile set out in the MFF Regulation and that this situation results in a risk of exceeding payment ceilings in the later years; considers that the frontloading of payments towards 2025 and 2026 could alleviate the pressure on payments; calls on the Commission to closely monitor the payments evolution and provide timely information to the European Parliament in this regard; considers that the frontloading of payments towards 2025 and 2026 could alleviate the pressure on payments;
Amendment 11 #
Paragraph 8
8. Notes that support under RESTORE according to the Commission is considered not to alter the contribution of ERDF and ESF+ to climate targets as set out in the relevant regulations and in point 16 of the IIA; underlines, however, that re- programming and inclusion of repair and reconstruction measures, particularly under ERDF support, could lead to shifting resources from interventions with a higher coefficient for calculation of support to climate change objectives to lower actual coefficients stemming from the programs agreed, thus potentially reducing the expenditures supporting climate objectives therefore, while still respecting the regulation threshold and insist that the commitment made by the Commission not to allow for prevention measures already programmed to alter their geographical scope is the bare minimum in this regard; regrets that the Commission has not made an impact assessment of the proposal on the requirement for climate spending or climate-related classification of spending;
Amendment 13 #
Paragraph 9
9. Fears that a broader definition of ‘natural disaster’the accelerating frequency and intensity of natural disasters and to some extent a broader definition of ‘natural disaster’ than the one used in EUSF but already used in state aid (GBER) and CAP context could lead to more than estimated programme amendments, thus potentially triggering higher than estimated payment needs that have not yet been factored in for the coming years;
Amendment 15 #
Paragraph 9a (new)
9a. Welcomes the commitment for building back better as the best way to ensure effectiveness of the spending also beyond climate-proofing in this context; stresses therefore that reconstruction in response to natural disasters, operations based on the “build back better principle” should be prioritised in line with other Union instruments and using the recovery, rehabilitation and reconstruction phases after a disaster to increase the resilience of communities through integrating disaster risk reduction measures as indicated in the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030;
Amendment 16 #
Paragraph 9b (new)
9b. Fears that the possible reprogramming of ESF+ objectives Art 4 (m) exempting reprogramming from accompanying measures will impact the overall delivery of this particular objective significantly, especially in light of the passivity to use this retroactively;