Proposal for a Decision Of The European Parliament And Of The Council amending Decision No 574/2007/EC with a view to increasing the co-financing rate of the External Borders Fund for certain Member States experiencing or threatened with serious difficulties with respect to their financial stability

The sustained financial and economic crisis is stepping up the pressure on national financial resources as Member States reduce their budgets. In this context, ensuring the smooth implementation of programmes adopted under the four Funds established as part of the General Programme on ‘Solidarity and Management of Migration Flows’ (hereinafter referred to as ‘the Funds’), is of particular importance as a means of injecting funds into the economy.

Nonetheless, implementation of the programmes is often challenging as a result of liquidity problems caused by budget constraints that often lead to severe cutbacks in expenditures, consequently augmenting problems during a period of sustained crisis. This is the case in particular for those Member States which have been most affected by the current crisis and have received financial assistance under a programme from the European Financial Stabilisation Mechanism (EFSM), the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) or bilateral loans for the euro countries or from the Balance of Payments (BoP) mechanism for non-euro countries. To date, six countries — including Greece, which also received financial assistance before the establishment of EFSM via bilateral loans — have requested financial assistance under the various support mechanisms and have agreed with the Commission on a macro-economic adjustment programme. These six countries are Hungary, Romania, Latvia (under the BoP), Portugal, Greece and Ireland (under the EFSM/EFSF/bilaterally). It should be noted that the programme for Hungary expired in 2010 while the programme for Latvia expired in early 2012.

To ensure that Member States benefiting from a financial support mechanism (or any other Member States which may be concerned by such assistance in the future) continue to implement the programmes adopted under the Funds and disburse funds to projects, this proposal contains provisions that would allow the Commission to increase the Union co- financing rate for these countries, for the period during which they benefit from financial assistance provided by one of the support mechanisms under any funding instruments. This will provide additional financial resources to the Member States and will make it easier to continue implementing the programmes on the ground.

EUR-Lex: COM(2012)527: Follow the progress of this document through the decision-making procedure http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/HIS/?uri=COM:2012:527:FIN

ESO: Background information: Proposal for a Decision of the European Parliament and of the Council amending Decision No 573/2007/EC, Decision No 575/2007/EC and Council Decision 2007/435/EC... http://www.europeansources.info/record/proposal-for-a-decision-of-the-european-parliament-and-of-the-council-amending-decision-no-573-2007-ec-decision-no-575-2007-ec-and-council-decision-2007-435-ec-with-a-view-to-increasing-the-co-financ/

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