Mr President, the European Investment Bank grants loans to non-EU countries, guaranteed by the European Union. The bank guarantees individual loans freely in accordance with its own criteria and not the precise guidelines laid down by the EU. However, the Union has fixed a ceiling for the loans it guarantees. The loans are not guaranteed one hundred percent and the Council decided in December 1999 to guarantee just 65% of the final total for loans for the period 2000-2007. For the rest the bank must itself obtain other forms of security or cover the risk itself. In practice there is no risk and the European Investment Bank would even be prepared to lower the percentage the EU guarantees. There is a special Guarantee Fund in the Union budget for loans from the EIB. For each guarantee, funds are transferred from a special reserve into the Guarantee Fund, with a maximum amount decided in the finance frameworks contained in the interinstitutional agreement. In 2000 a maximum of 204 million euros can be transferred from the reserve to the Guarantee Fund. Technically 9% of the sum for EIB loans should be transferred from the reserve into the Guarantee Fund, a figure representing 65% of the nominal value of the loans. The Guarantee Fund in the budget is also used for macroeconomic aid to non-EU countries. It is a cheap way for the Member States to grant development aid. These loans are granted on political grounds to the EU’s humble partners and they are guaranteed one hundred percent by the Guarantee Fund, unlike the Investment Bank loans. In macroeconomic aid it is often a question of the EU’s share in an overall package in which other sources of aid are the World Bank and the IMF. Generally, financial aid to non-member countries is granted in accordance with the economic and political behavioural criteria set by the IMF – the more guarantees are given for Investment Bank loans, the less macroeconomic aid can be granted, and vice versa. The Guarantee Fund can also be used to guarantee the Euratom loans to support the development of core industries in non-member countries, although no transfers from the reserves to the Guarantee Fund have had to be organised for these sorts of loans in recent years. In December 1999 the Council decided the maximum amount for guarantees for the Investment Bank for the period 2000-2007, and produced a list of non-member countries that would be entitled to receive aid. The European Parliament adopted a position on the matter in a report by Mrs Rühle in autumn 1999. As Parliament has been heard, the matter is no longer being discussed in Parliament with regard to the terms and conditions of the guarantees. Parliament must today decide a very simple matter: whether Croatia should join that group of countries to which the European Investment Bank may grant loans with an EU guarantee. Croatia is no longer at war and democratic change has taken place there. So there are good grounds for the country joining the group of borrowers, just as there are to increase the ceiling of the EIB mandate. If Parliament could table amendments to the Council Decision it would certainly remind us of Croatia’s unemployment and social problems, which are the result of that country being put on a slimming regimen, but there is no legal basis here for such amendments. The same problem of legal competence will also apply in the decision to be discussed soon in Parliament regarding Turkey joining the group of those countries receiving loan guarantees given by the EU to the European Investment Bank. Parliament is bound to have a lot of conditions it would like to impose on loans to Turkey, but at the time we will be making a decision in practice with regard to just one word. Today we add Croatia to the list of those receiving guarantees and then it will be Turkey’s turn. In this connection we will at the same time make it known to the Commission that next year the Guarantee Fund reserves will not be sufficient for guaranteeing the loans we can expect.

Political group: GUE-NGL