Читать книгу The economic policy of the european union in the context of the covid-19 crisis - Francisco Jesús Carrera Hernández - Страница 15

The European Investment Bank (hereinafter EIB) has the power to lend capital to the Member States of the European Union (hereinafter EU) and strengthen their economies. Therefore, in the face of the crisis resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, it has been included in the economic safety nets to channel economic support from the EU, which has been a very important challenge to face the current crisis. The purpose of this chapter is to analyze the role of the EIB and to understand its performance in dealing with the emergency situation. As we know, it has the power to contribute to specific projects aimed at influencing the development of the most backward regions, paying attention to the modernization or reconversion of companies, and contributing to the common interest of the several Member States that cannot be fully funded with the different means of financing existing in each of them.

The EU has established a series of instruments to respond to the financial and health emergency situation in order to achieve stability. As of February 2020, the increase in COVID-19 cases within the EU became known, and an extraordinary Health Council was formed in which conclusions were adopted. Among these, the European Commission (hereinafter CE) was asked to activate existing financing mechanisms to support the Member States, as well as to address health security and prevention of a possible regrowth.

Since the beginning of the attention to this emergency situation due to COVID-19, the EU worked to prevent further health and financial effects. Among these, I would like to highlight the coordination of meetings held by the EU institutions and the ministers of different sectors of the Union, such as employment and social affairs, commercial policy, health, agriculture or transportation, among others. In addition to this, support was established for sectors such as tourism, aviation and railways, agriculture and fisheries, transport, etc. Likewise, aid was allocated to the most affected regions in terms of employment and social affairs, as well as to neighboring partners. For its part, flexible measures were established regarding schedules and transport licenses. Support was also given for the repatriation of European citizens blocked abroad. In turn, in the health sector, restrictions were established, in different lists and over time, for travel to third countries. Something also significant is that different vaccines were approved during the year 2021; so much so that, in August 20211, part of the attention of the European institutions was focused on the variants of COVID-19, among other relevant issues.

In order to face such a complex emergency situation, in addition to the aforementioned political solutions for economic support, decisions were made on regulatory and budgetary modifications, while support was assigned to the EU States. In relation to the regulatory adaptation to recognize the health emergency modality, Regulation (EU) 2020/461 of the European Parliament and of the Council of March 30, 2020, which amended Council Regulation (EC) No 2012/2002, was established in order to provide financial assistance to those Member States and countries whose accession to the Union is under negotiation and are seriously affected by the health emergency. In the first regulatory instrument, the Fund was created to provide financial assistance to the Member States in the wake of major disasters as a concrete sign of European solidarity in difficult situations. With the reform, another modality of affectation was added, that of human health conditions. Likewise, public health was included as the second scenario of major emergency, to which was added the requirement that it must occur in the territory of that same State eligible for aid. Finally, to the definition of serious natural catastrophe, established in art. 2, art. 2 bis, the “serious public health emergency” was added.

Regarding aid from European Structural and Investment Funds, the regulation already provided, in accordance with paragraph 1, art. 6, that the beneficiary State would be responsible for coordinating the financial contribution of the Fund to the operations (covering part of its public expenditure in order to help the State in urgent operations of first necessity and recovery). On the one hand, with aid of the European Structural and Investment Funds, as well as EIB interventions, and, on the other hand, with the Union financing instruments. The regulation regarding the implementations of the funds was modified in relation to the report on the implementation of the funds, adding to the measures for natural catastrophes those for similar public health emergencies, and the use of European Structural and Investment Funds was included to this effect. Regulatory modifications were also made in this area in order to adapt European investment to the emergency situation.

It was also decided to finance budgetary measures such as Decision (EU) 2020/545 of the European Parliament and of the Council of April 17, 2020, on the mobilization of the Flexibility Instrument to finance immediate budgetary measures in the context of the COVID-19 outbreak and the strengthening of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office. This instrument establishes that, within the framework of the general budget of the Union for the financial year 2020, the Flexibility Instrument shall be mobilized to enter in heading 3 (Security and citizenship) the amount of 73,300,000 euros in commitment appropriations. This amount will be used to finance immediate measures. Furthermore, the payment profile of the credits corresponding to the mobilization of the Flexibility Instrument was established, taking into account the figures assigned to pay in the years 2020 and 2021. In addition to this, in the framework of the general budget of the Union in 2020, said Flexibility Instrument allocated the amount of 243,039,699 euros in commitment appropriations, which financed immediate measures to face the current health crisis in the EU2.

For their part, as a European recovery plan aimed at EU citizens, businesses and countries, EU leaders pledged –on April 23, 2020– to create an EU recovery fund aimed at mitigating the effects of the crisis. Subsequently, on July 21, the same EU leaders reached an agreement on an overall budget for 2021-2027. This set of measures was brought together in the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) and the extraordinary recovery measures within the framework of the Next Generation EU instrument – which aims to contribute to the reconstruction of the EU after the pandemic and support investing in green and digital transitions3.

It should be noted that, regarding the economic recovery of the EU, on April 9, 2020, the Eurogroup established political decisions by laying down plans to relaunch the economy. To this end, three important economic safety nets were created to protect workers and employment, as well as companies and the Member States. The aim is to not leave them unprotected against the impact of COVID-19. These safety nets are a) the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), b) the SURE (European instrument for temporary Support to mitigate Unemployment Risks in an Emergency), and c) the agreement on the EIB guarantee fund for business4. Regarding the safety net assigned to the EIB, Professor Jesús Carrera points out that “the EU has adopted measures aimed at mobilizing the EIB group in order to offer liquidity and be able to deploy support measures for companies, sectors and regions5”. After its approval as a form of support to address the situation, a new pan-European guarantee fund was established to support companies that are facing the economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, the third safety net that we will discuss in this work.

Finally, it is necessary to highlight that the EU recovery and resilience funds are being authorized to the EU countries –Cyprus, Croatia, Slovenia and Lithuania– recently at the time of the preparation of this text6, on 28 February July 2021. Previously, on July 13, 2021, the first EU recovery funds were allocated to twelve EU countries (Germany, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Slovakia, Spain, France, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg and Portugal)7. In this regard, it was announced that the Council began taking implementation decisions aimed at the approval of plans, in which the Member States can sign grant and loan agreements that allow pre-financing8. Meanwhile, the EU and the Member States took measures to reduce the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.