Modernisation Fund

6.6.2016

Question for written answer E-004650-16
to the Commission
Rule 130
Jadwiga Wiśniewska (ECR)

The Council conclusions of October 2014 on the 2030 climate and energy framework for the EU proposed the setting-up of a modernisation fund for the poorest EU Member States which should be built using 2% of all EU ETS allowances and should ‘be managed by the beneficiary Member States, with the involvement of the EIB’. A draft amendment to the ETS Directive (COM(2015)337), which is intended to implement the Council's proposals, proposes, on the contrary, that the fund be managed by an investment board comprising the beneficiary countries, three other countries, the Commission and the EIB, with the EIB, the Commission and the three other countries able to block the project put forward by the beneficiary. In this connection:

• 1.Does the Commission not see the contradiction between the Council's proposals, which make no reference to the Commission and any countries other than the beneficiary countries and which propose an advisory role for the EIB, and the proposals set out in the draft amendment, which give those entities control over the fund?
• 2.Is it true that following the Council summit in October 2014, some EU-15 Member States put pressure on the Commission to increase control over the fund, given that it is funded from allowances to which those Member States are entitled? Which countries did this?
• 3.What is the Commission's understanding of a ‘small-scale investment project’, in respect of which the investment board is supposed to draft guidelines and criteria for the selection of investments?