31 Amendments of Bas EICKHOUT related to 2016/2064(INI)
Amendment 5 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 1
Paragraph 1
1. Takes note of the large investment gap in Europe, which the Commission estimates at a minimum of EUR 200-300 billion a year; , highlights in particular, against this backdrop, the marketpublic needs in Europe for high-risk financing, for instance in the fields of R&D, energy and ICTparticularly in the fields of the strategic areas transport, communications and energy infrastructure, necessary to sustain inclusive economic development based on independence from the physical and political risks of fossil fuels; is concerned by the fact that the most recent data on national accounts do not indicate any surge in investment since the Investment Plan for Europe, including the CMU and European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI), was launched, leading to risks ofconcerns that, without a change in focus, there will be continued subdued growth and continuing high unemployment rates; stresses that closing this investment gap by creating an environment conducive to investment in certain strategic areas is key to reviving growth, fighting unemployment and attaining long-term EU policy objectives;
Amendment 7 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 1
Paragraph 1
1. WelcomesLooks forward to see the restablishment ofult of the work by the EFSI bodies and the transparent selection procedure for members of their governance structure and asks that the European Parliament, the Council and public are regularly informed about their work;
Amendment 10 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 2
Paragraph 2
2. Welcomes the Strategic Orientation approved by the EFSI Steering Board in December 2015, which includes indicative geographical concentration limits; notes anregrets the unbalanced geographical distribution among beneficiaries of the EFSI that is in contradiction to EFSI's aim to foster further cohesion; recalls that the GDP ratio criterion is relevant, among other things to ensure economic, social and territorial cohesion, with a view to ensuring a balanced spread of projects; recommends the establishment of clear mechanisms to reject EFSI funding for certain projects;
Amendment 14 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 3 a (new)
Paragraph 3 a (new)
3 a. encourages the Commission to introduce rules for the selection of sustainable projects, linking them to the main EU policy goals and targets, such as zero- and low-emissions mobility or to link them to existing initiatives like the trans-European cycling networks combined with rail travel and initiatives that aim to re-establish regional cross- border rail links that were abandoned or dismantled (www.missing-rail-links.eu);
Amendment 26 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 6
Paragraph 6
6. Asks for European Added Value to be considered as a major criterion in the selection process and for the EFSI to be in line with EU policy goals, in particular cross-border projects and other projects pre-identirail sections as defined in the CEF and other EU flagship initiatives in the field of transport (such as ERTMS and SESAR)Article 2 (2) of the regulation 1316/2013 between cohesion countries, projects that create synergies between different trans- European Transport, Energy and Telecommunication networks and horizontal projects;
Amendment 30 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 2
Paragraph 2
2. Emphasises that EFSI was launched to help resolve difficulties and remove obstacles to financing as well as to implement strategic, transformative and productive investments that provide a high level of added value to the economy, the environment and societysociety through improving the economy and mitigating environmental threats;
Amendment 30 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 6 a (new)
Paragraph 6 a (new)
6 a. urges the Commission to focus on investing in such projects that contribute to minimising external costs instead of generating more;
Amendment 35 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 2 a (new)
Paragraph 2 a (new)
2a. Regrets the low levels of investment with regard to social infrastructure, environmental infrastructure and energy efficiency, and calls for concerted efforts to boost investment in respect thereof;
Amendment 37 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 2 b (new)
Paragraph 2 b (new)
2b. Recalls that the COP 21 climate agreement requires a major shift in investment towards energy efficiency, renewable energy and sustainable modes of transport, and a swift phasing out of investment in fossil fuel investment and modes of transport. Stresses that the eligibility criteria for EFSI need to be fully coherent with the COP 21 agreement;
Amendment 38 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 9
Paragraph 9
9. Notes with concern that the small number of transport projects in the EFSI would seem to be evidence of this sector’s difficulty in obtaining funding mostly or exclusively from private investors, even where CEF funding has been almost exhausted and no alternative EU funding is available until 2020; call on the Commission to pay particular attention to providing more support to local authorities as well as SMEs;
Amendment 41 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 3
Paragraph 3
3. Recalls the role of Parliament as foreseen in the regulation, in particular in relation to the monitoring of EFSI implementation; acknowledges, however, that it is too early to finalise a comprehensive assessment of the functioning of EFSI and its impact on the EU economy, but is of the opinion that a preliminary evaluation based on comprehensive data on the projects selected and rejected and the related decisions is crucial in order to identify possible areas of improvement for EFSI 2.0 and thereafter;
Amendment 44 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 11
Paragraph 11
11. Suggests that the Commission should, in its regular reports, list the projects that benefit from blending CEF grants with the EFSI; also insists on the Commission to regularly publish detailed information of projects and the amounts of EU funding received per project.
Amendment 53 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 4
Paragraph 4
4. Recalls that the purpose of EFSI is to ensure additionality by helping to address market failures or suboptimal investment situations and supporting operations which could not have been carried out under existing Union financial instruments and would not have been funded from private sources without the involvement of EFSI;
Amendment 62 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 5
Paragraph 5
5. Recalls that the projects supported by EFSI, while striving to create employment, sustainable growth, economic, territorial and social cohesion, are considered to provide additionality if they carry a risk corresponding to EIB special activities, as defined in Article 16 of the EIB Statute and by the credit risk policy guidelines of the EIB; underlines that EIB projects carrying a risk lower than the minimum risk under EIB special activities may also be supported by EFSI only if use of the EU guarantee is required to ensure additionalityconsiders that projects carrying a risk corresponding to EIB special activities may be a desirable feature but is in practice too simplistic a criterion for the assessment of additionality as it is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for ensuring that resulting investments are of a kind that would not have been made without EFSI; underlines that EIB projects carrying a risk lower than the minimum risk under EIB special activities may also be supported by EFSI only if they are strategic in nature and the use of the EU guarantee is necessary to ensure an adequate amount of financing from other public or private sources; further underlines that the mere fact that a project carries a risk corresponding to EIB special activities are not necessarily strategic;
Amendment 80 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 6
Paragraph 6
6. Notes that, while all projects approved under EFSI are presented as ‘special activities’, an independent evaluation has found that some projects could have been financed otherwiswithout the use of the EU guarantee;
Amendment 90 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 7
Paragraph 7
7. Calls on the Commission, in cooperation with the EIB, to draw up an inventory of all EU-backed EIB financing falling under the additionality criteria and to provide clear and comprehensive explanations of the evidence that they could not have been achieved through other means;
Amendment 119 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 9 a (new)
Paragraph 9 a (new)
9a. Strongly recommends that the revised scoreboard be made available to applicants for EFSI financing in order to incentivise the design of projects to maximise the scores;
Amendment 121 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 10
Paragraph 10
10. Considers that the criteria according to which projects and eligible counterparts are assessed are unclear and lack transparency; requests further information from the EFSI governing bodies on the evaluations carried out on all projects approved under EFSI accordingly, in particular as regards their additionality and contribution to growth and job creation as defined in the Regulation; As regards eligible counterparts, regrets that scandal- ridden financial undertakings such as Bankia have been chosen, and calls for strict rules on corporate governance for these type of entities to become acceptable EFSI partners;
Amendment 137 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 11
Paragraph 11
11. Recalls that the scoreboard is supposed to be used by the Investment Committee (IC) to ensure an independent and transparent assessment of the potential and actual use of the EU guarantee and to prioritise projects; requestsgrets that this is not in fact done as the IC has chosen to assess each project individually and not in relation to other potential investments in violation of basic optimal investment principles; insists that this non- conformity with EU law be rectified immediately and that the project selection criteria be properly applied and this process be made more transparent; recalls that according to the Annex to the current Regulation the IC must assign equal importance to each pillar of the scoreboard when prioritising projects, irrespective of whether the individual pillar yields a numerical score, or whether it is composed of unscored qualitative and quantitative indicators; regrets that Pillar 3 relevant to technical aspects of the projects are in the current scoreboard given the same weight as Pillars 1 and 2 which relate to the more important desired outcomes and that “promoter capabilities”, another technical aspect, is inexplicably placed in Pillar 2 rather than Pillar 3; criticises the fact that the EIB itself admits that the IC’s experts only make use of the 4th pillar for information purposes, not for decision- making; requests that scoreboards, with the exclusion of commercially sensitive information, are made public after the endorsement of the respective projects, including the scoreboard for rejected projects of material size and a summary scoreboard for the entire portfolio;
Amendment 143 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 11 a (new)
Paragraph 11 a (new)
11a. Calls for the Scoreboard to be redesigned to give much more weight to final outcomes, such as quality jobs and public infrastructure conducive to long- term sustainable economic development and much less weight to intermediate goals such as the ratio of private to public funds deployed or technical aspects of delivery;
Amendment 150 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 12
Paragraph 12
12. Acknowledges that it may take some years to prepare new innovative and strategic projects, that the EIB is regrettably under pressure to achieve the EUR 315 billion goalsimplistic and purely quantitative EUR 315 billion goal rather than seek the best way to address output and employment gaps and therefore had no option but to launch EFSI activities immediatehastily, is concerned, however, that the EIB, when implementing EFSI, has consequently thus far drawn on its existing project pipeline with lower risk projects to a large extent, thereby reducing its own conventional financing; fears that EFSI does not provide complementary financing for high-risk innovative and strategic projects; underlines that even though a project qualifies as a special activity, this does not necessarily imply that it is risky, however the classification as a special activity might also stem from the fact that its financing has been structured in an artificially risky fashion, implying that very low-risk projects can also easily end up as high-risk projects;
Amendment 164 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 14
Paragraph 14
14. Considers it important to discuss whether the envisaged leverage of 15 is appropriate to enable EFSI to support high quality projects bearing a higher risk; invites the EIB to weigh up complemensubordinating the volume requirement with secondary goals to be achievedprimary goals to be achieved related to closing output and unemployment gaps; Notes also that the methodology used to calculate the leverage or multiplier effect risks overstating the actual impact of the use of EU funds, particularly for the investment projects to which investors had already committed or which were part of national programmes that were in place or planned even before EFSI was launched; welcomes the Court of Auditors suggestion to align the ‘EFSI Multiplier Methodology’ with the relevant methodology suggested by the OECD;
Amendment 229 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 20
Paragraph 20
20. Recalls that the IC experts are responsible for EFSI project selection, granting the EU guarantee and for approving operations with investment platforms and National Promotional Banks (NPBs) or institutions; recalls further that they are independent; considers that project selection is not transparent enough and that decisions have to be accounted for; stresses that the EIB should make improvements to the disclosure of information about the projects it approves under EFSI, with a proper justification of additionality and the scoreboard with a particular emphasis on the expected impact of EFSI operations, in aggregate and separately for large projects or programs, on the employment and output gaps in the Union; is concerned about documented conflicts of interest on the part of IC members;
Amendment 241 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 22 a (new)
Paragraph 22 a (new)
22a. As regards the EP internal organisation and in the light of the EIB’s growing tasks and responsibilities, urges the Conference of Presidents to make a proposal for a single committee approach, with view to ensuring a permanently high level of accountability of the EIB towards the EP and civil society.
Amendment 244 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 23
Paragraph 23
23. Recalls that as a result of their know-how, NPBs are necessary for the success of EFSI, as they are close to the local markets; finds that synergies have so far not been exploited to the requisite extent ; observes a risk of local institutions being crowded out by the EIB; recognises that EFSI and the EIB are increasingly willing to take more junior/subordinated tranches with the NPBs and urges them to continue to do so; invites the EIB to discuss whether it would be useful to incorporate NPB expertise into the SB; Encourages NPBs to enter into collaboration agreements with the EIF to foster exchange of expertise and market knowledge.
Amendment 251 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 24
Paragraph 24
24. Recalls that diversified investments with a geographical or thematic focus should be made possible by helping to finance and bundle projects and funds from different sources; notes that the first investment platform was only set up in the third quarter of 2016; highlights the need to simplify the rules for establishing investment platforms; encourages the Commission to enlarge its investment platform approach as developed with regard to the circular economy to other EU priority sectors;
Amendment 277 #
28. Welcomes that by the end of 2016, all 28 countries received EFSI funding; underlines, however, that as of 30 June 2016, EU-15 had received 91% whereas EU-13 had only received 9% of EFSI support; regrets that EFSI support has mainly benefitted a limited number of countries where the employment and output gaps are already below the EU average;
Amendment 285 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 29
Paragraph 29
29. Acknowledges that GDP and the number of projects approved are linked; recognises that larger Member States are able to take advantage of more developed capital markets and are therefore more likely to benefit from a market-driven instrument such as EFSI but insists that the EFSI was set up to address market failures in investment areas necessary to close output and employment gaps and not to take advantage of market success; underlines that lower EFSI support in EU- 13 may be attributable to other factors, such as the small size of projects, and competition from the European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF); observes with concern, however, the disproportionate benefit to certain countries and underlines the need to diversify geographical distribution further, especially in crucial sectors such asstrategic areas related to the modernising and improving the productivity and sustainability of economies;
Amendment 315 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 40
Paragraph 40
40. Recalls that the Union provides an irrevocable and unconditional guarantee to the EIB for financing and investment operations under EFSI; is convinced that the EU Guarantee has enabled the EIB to take on higher risk for the Infrastructure and Investment Window (IIW) and has permitted the financing of SMEs, Midcaps under COSME and InnovFin forsupported by the SME Window (SMEW) to be enhanced and frontloaded; believes that the current threshold of € 25 Million should be lowered to improve access of SMEs to EFSI;
Amendment 320 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 41
Paragraph 41
41. Stresses that, due to a very strong uptake reflecting the high market demand,making use of a pre- existing pipeline of funding requests for the COSME Loan Guarantee Facility (LGF) and the InnovFin – Horizon 2020 SME Guarantee (SMEG) facility the SME Window was further reinforced by EUR 500 million from the IIW Debt Portfolio under the existing legislative framework; welcomes that, due to the flexibility of the EFSI Regulation, the additional financing was granted to benefit SMEs and small mid-caps; intends to monitor closely the allocation of the guarantee under the two windows;
Amendment 350 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 45 a (new)
Paragraph 45 a (new)
45a. Is concerned about the Commission proposal requiring the highest risk-taking tranche of the investment to be covered by ESI Funds instead of EFSI when the instruments are combined; Believes that this leads to legal uncertainty in the use of ESI Funds, and runs counter to the initial EFSI rationale to provide for new risk-bearing capacity for EU investment;