Proposal for a REGULATION OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL establishing the Neighbourhood, Development and International Cooperation Instrument - Progress report - Main contents

Document date	12-12-2019
Publication date	13-12-2019
Reference	14935/19
External link	original article
Original document in PDF

Council of the European Union Brussels, 12 December 2019 (OR. en)

14935/19 Interinstitutional File:

2018/0243(COD) i LIMITE

CADREFIN 405 COAFR 248 FIN 801 COASI 161 POLGEN 196 CORLX 483 CODEC 1741 COHOM 136 ACP 148 ECOFIN 1125 COEST 280 ASIM 149 MAMA 176 MIGR 205 DEVGEN 236 ATO 106 COLAC 86 PE 256

'I' ITEM NOTE

From: Presidency

To: Permanent Representatives Committee (Part 2)

No. Cion doc.: COM(2018) 460 final i

Subject: Proposal for a REGULATION OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND

OF THE COUNCIL establishing the Neighbourhood, Development and International Cooperation Instrument - Progress report

• I. 

  INTRODUCTION

• 1. 

  On 14 June 2018, as part of the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) 2021-2027 package, the Commission put forward a proposal for a Neighbourhood, Development and International Cooperation Instrument (NDICI) 1 .

• 2. 

  The Commission proposes that the future Regulation will supersede a number of existing external financing instruments 2 , aiming at creating a simplified and more coherent

  architecture for future EU external financing. The financial envelope proposed for NDICI by the Commission for the period 2021-2027 is EUR 89 200 000 000 (in current prices).

II. WORK IN OTHER INSTITUTIONS

• 3. 

  The Committee of the Regions delivered its opinion on 6 December 2018 3 and the European Economic and Social Committee delivered its opinion on 12 December 2018 4 . The Court of Auditors delivered its opinion on 13 December 2018 5 .

• 4. 

  In the European Parliament, the file is assigned to the Committee on Foreign Affairs (AFET) and the Committee on Development (DEVE). The final AFET-DEVE report was endorsed in the joint Committee on 4 March 2019. The European Parliament adopted its position on

  27 March 2019. 6

III. WORK AT THE COUNCIL PREPARATORY BODIES

• 5. 

  The proposal has been examined by the Ad Hoc Working Party on the Neighbourhood, Development and International Cooperation Instrument (AH WP - MFF NDICI) during the Bulgarian, Austrian and Romanian Presidencies and in June 2019 the Council reached an agreement on the Council's partial negotiating mandate 7 . A total of 17 meetings of the Working Party took place under the Finnish Presidency, during which the proposals to complement the partial negotiating mandate were discussed as well as preparations for technical meetings and political trilogues with the European Parliament took place.

2 The Common Implementing Regulation (CIR), the European Neighbourhood Instrument

(ENI), the Development Cooperation Instrument (DCI), the Partnership Instrument for cooperation with third countries (PI), the Instrument contributing to Stability and Peace (IcSP); the European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR); the European Fund for Sustainable Development, its Guarantee and its Guarantee Fund (EFSD); the guarantee fund for external action and the European Development Fund (EDF).

3 15622/18.

4 15657/18.

5 OJ C 45, 4.2.2019, p. 1. 6 A8-0173/2019.

7 10305/19.

• 6. 

  The Finnish Presidency continued the examination of the outstanding issues at the level of the Working Party and, as a result, on 25 September, the European Fund for Sustainable

  Development+ (EFSD+) was added to the partial negotiating mandate 8 , with the question of

  capital participation in a development bank being left to be discussed after the adoption of the

  Council conclusions on Strengthening the European financial architecture for development 9 .

  The Finnish Presidency has also been working on a compromise regarding the way in which this instrument addresses migration. At its meeting on 27 November, Coreper endorsed a set of compromise proposals covering migration related provisions, notably recital (30) and

  Article 8(7) and thereby complemented the Council partial negotiating madate 10 .

• 7. 

  The proposed Regulation is part of the package of proposals linked to the MFF 2021-2027 and therefore dependent on the outcome of the horizontal negotiations. For these reasons parts of the text submitted to Coreper in June, September and November have been put in square bracket and are thus not part of the Council partial negotiating mandate 11 .

8 12457/19.

9 14434/19.

10 14628/19.

11 Pending the horizontal negotiations as set out in the Negotiating Box (14518/1/19 REV1) the partial negotiating mandate of the Council is annotated with square brackets for the

reference amounts in Article 6, the overall target of the EU budget expenditures supporting climate objectives and the sectoral spending target for climate action (recital 28), the protection of the Union's budget in case of generalised deficiencies as regards the rule of law in the Member States and third countries (recital 31) and the provisions related to the participation of non-EU countries. Moreover, other provisions of the draft NDICI Regulation appear in square brackets due to their inclusion in the draft Negotiating Box. These concern several structural issues, such as the inclusion of the European Neighbourhood Instrument (ENI), the budgetisation of the European Development Fund (EDF) and the carry-over of unused appropriations and the availability of decommitted appropriations. The AH WP MFF NDICI held exchanges on these parts of the text with the understanding that no conclusions can be drawn of these discussions. All provisions put in square brackets are not part of the partial mandate and will be decided on at a later stage. Cross-references to other legislative proposals for financial instruments (IPA III, ETC, OCTs) and international agreements under negotiations (post-Cotonou) are also bracketed pending discussions in other fora.

IV. INTER-INSTITUTIONAL NEGOTIATIONS

• 8. 

  The inter-institutional negotiations with the European Parliament on the proposed Instrument started by an opening trilogue on 23 October at which the negotiating teams agreed on the

  working methodology (the issues to be grouped in clusters and discussions carried out at technical level in preparation of the agreement at political level) and on the provisional working calendar. The negotiations then continued through a series of technical meetings on 5, 15, 21, 29 November and 9 December 2019.

• 9. 

  A second trilogue was held on 5 December 2019 where the co-legislators confirmed preliminary agreement on most parts of Cluster 1 (subject matter, objectives, scope and structure, coherence, consistency and complementarity, general principles and cushion). In addition, some outstanding issues under Cluster 1 were addressed at political level, but could not yet be solved at this stage of negotiations. The negotiating teams will revert to them at technical and political level in line with the agreed methodology.

• V. 

  CONCLUSIONS

• 10. 

  On the basis of the above, the Permanent Representatives Committee is invited to take note of the state of play of the discussions on the Neighbourhood, Development and International

  Cooperation Instrument (NDICI) legislative proposal.