Budget MEPs call for bold response to Corona emergency

26-03-2020 - 13:10
Johan Van Overtveldt, Chair of the Committee on Budgets, in a Parliament meeting
Johan Van Overtveldt, Chair of the Committee on Budgets © (© 2019 EU-EP/MG)

Ahead of the EU summit, the Chair and the coordinators of the Committee on Budgets call for an ambitious budgetary and financial package in response to the Covid-19 outbreak. "The Union budget is part of the solution to overcome the public health and economic shock (...) with instruments like the civil protection mechanism, the research framework programme, cohesion policy or InvestEU (...)."

The BUDG chair and coordinators therefore call on the Union institutions, and in particular the European Council and the European Commission, to push forward a comprehensive and ambitious budgetary and financial package (...), focussing in particular on a number of short and long-term measures.
Immediately:
  • mobilise some EUR 4 billion in unallocated margins and flexibilities in 2020 budget,
  • refocus EUR 3 billion of budgetary surplus from 2019,
  • allow Member States a maximum of flexibility in redirecting resources from cohesion funds to the fight against the coronavirus.
With a longer term perspective, they urge the European Commission to:
  • urgently update its proposal for the 2021-2027 Multiannual Financial Framework to take account of the new challenges and needs;
  • propose immediately a contingency plan to protect beneficiaries and avoid a shutdown of Union programmes at the end of this year, as it might not be possible to have the new programmes up and running by then.