Debate: Establishing the Reform and Growth Facility for the Western Balkans
Date: TUESDAY, 23 APRIL 2024
Speaker: Helena Dalli
Language: EN

The final text represents a balanced agreement maintaining efficiency during the implementation of the facility, while providing unparalleled transparency and oversight to the Council and to the Parliament. The facility has a novel design where payments are linked to the implementation of socio-economic reform and reform related to the fundamental of the enlargement process, including rule of law and democracy. Each Western Balkan government is currently preparing a reform agenda that specifies a list of priority reforms, and I am pleased to share that we have made significant progress in developing these agendas together with our Western Balkan partners. They are working hard to finalise them. Following the political agreement on the regulation, we are working on a fast turnaround to adopt the reform agenda as to the final regulation text. We concentrate on defining measurable steps towards achievement of each reform. Importantly, each step will have a financial value that reflects its political importance and relevance to progressing on the enlargement path.  We have therefore asked the Western Balkan governments to take into account the new objectives and the expanded policy framework of the facility, which create a stronger link to the enlargement process and priorities, without diminishing the whole focus on the immediate socio-economic growth of the region. This will help realise the objectives of the Growth Plan to speed up efforts for a European future for the Western Balkans. We are also stepping up consultations, which is also one of the requirements of the co-legislators. Each beneficiary is organising consultations with national stakeholders and on our side we are consulting civil society organisations and international financial institutions.  We have also stepped up the preparation of the Western Balkans Investment Framework Investments pipeline, and have organised a number of joint stocktaking missions. It is critical now to keep up the highest ambition for reforms and ensure that we maintain the high momentum created. We have set up for ourselves a challenging timeline that should lead to start implementation already this summer. Of course, much will depend on the finalisation of the agendas and for that we need the beneficiaries to continue delivering on the last mile with the same high level of commitment demonstrated so far.  The Commission will share the reform agendas with the Parliament and the Council as soon as they are available. The Commission will also share the facility and loan agreements with the Parliament and the Council, and provide strong oversight through the various provisions included in the final agreement, be it through annual reports on implementation and biannual presentations of payments and commitments, the public scoreboard on implementation, or the list of final recipients published by each beneficiary.  In the spirit of compromise, the Commission also agreed to make available to the Council and the Parliament information on commitments and payments, both affected and planned under the Western Balkans Facility per beneficiary on a bimonthly basis. We, however, regret that despite these strong transparency and budgetary oversight provisions, the Council and Parliament still intend to adopt a joint declaration to review the budgetary nomenclature of the facility, setting up a budget line per beneficiary, for a facility that pre-foresees the exact amounts each beneficiary will receive if they fulfil all conditions, makes very limited sense. Any such changes to the budgetary nomenclature would unduly interfere with the proper conduct of the budgetary procedure, and could potentially affect the implementation of the facility. Anyway, we are overall happy that we were able to reach a balanced final agreement in record time, which is eagerly awaited in the region.