External Borders Fund: increasing the Union co-financing rate

The Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs adopted the report by Nils TORVALDS (ALDE, FI) on the 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.

To recall, the Commission proposal aims to offer the possibility to increase the the co-financing rates for Member States benefiting from a financial support mechanism. The proposal aims to enable increasing the Union co-financing rate by twenty percentage points and thereby decrease the co-financing needs for the part of the Member States in question.

The committee supports the approach proposed by the Commission (and which already exists for other European Funds). The report states that the functioning management of migration flows is of great importance for the European Union as a whole. The inability of one Member State to ensure efficient management of migration flows does not only affect the country in question, it has also an impact on many other Member States as well. It is therefore in the interest of all Member States that the commitments made with regards to migration do not suffer from the economic difficulties in some Member States.

The committee calls on the European Parliament to adopt its position at first reading, taking over the Commission proposal.