Amending provisions risk sharing instruments - for Member States in difficulties

Key points:

The sustained economic and financial crisis has put pressure on public finances and thus caused liquidity problems for authorities and financial institutions to find adequate co-financing for cohesion programmes. Six Member States have been most affected by the crisis and currently benefit from financial assistance under the European Financial Stabilisation Mechanism (EFSM) for Euro countries, or from the Balance of Payments (BoP) mechanism for non-Euro countries. Currently these Member States are: Hungary, Romania, Latvia, Portugal, Greece and Ireland.

It is proposed to amend articles 14 and 36 of Regulation (EC) N° 1083/2006, allowing on the one hand for risk sharing instruments to be managed under indirect centralised management and on the other for Member States experiencing or threatened with serious difficulties with respect to their financial stability to contribute part of their allocations under the "Convergence" and "Regional competitiveness and employment" objectives of cohesion policy to the provisioning and capital allocations of loans or guarantees issued to project promoters and other public or private partners directly or indirectly by the EIB or other international financial institutions.

The proposed amendments to the general regulation do not change the maximum amount of financing provided for in the operational programmes for the programming period 2007-13.

The EESC approves the proposed amendments to Articles 14 and 36 of Regulation (EC) 1083/2006 which will help Member States that have been most affected by the crisis and receive financial support from the BoP mechanism or the EFSM.