Patricia Ryan
Question:415. Deputy Patricia Ryan asked the Minister for Finance the supports that have been provided by the EU to help Ireland to cope with the pandemic. [15546/21]
View answerWednesday, 24 March 2021
Questions (415)
Written answers
As the COVID-19 health crisis spread across the EU, my Department participated in EU negotiations and supported agreements establishing several EU budget-related changes to address the various challenges faced in 2020 and continuing up to 2026.
The Emergency Support Instrument (ESI) was activated in April/May 2020, for €2.7 bn. The ESI’s scope is broad, but it has mostly been used to fund advance purchase agreements with pharmaceutical companies developing vaccines, to increase the speed and scale of manufacturing successful vaccines, and provide the right to EU Member States to buy an agreed number of doses. The ESI’s scope also covers transport of patients, medical teams and equipment, testing, tracing, treatment and disinfection, and procurement of essential products.
The EU Civil Protection Mechanism’s budget was significantly increased, to allow for expanded disaster response support to Member States, from the Commission and other Member States. It financed repatriation flights of EU citizens abroad, stockpiles of essential medical and protective equipment, and moved assistance and equipment between Member States.
The natural disaster scope of the EU Solidarity Fund (EUSF) was expanded to allow for one-off support related to the major public health emergency. Member States had a deadline of June 2020 to submit applications for support. Following a preliminary assessment, some advances of this support were paid to Member States at the end of 2020, with the remainder paid in 2021.
Beyond additional funds, certain programmes were amended to allow them to respond to the crisis by redirecting and/or speeding up existing funds, including for SMEs, the agricultural and fisheries sectors, and neighbouring and developing countries.
The Coronavirus Response Investment Initiatives created liquidity within existing budget limits to speed up investments to respond to the pandemic, such as health equipment, SME support and labour market measures. They also allowed increased flexibility, permitting faster flows of funding, such as no longer requiring national budgets to co-finance EU spending, and permitting transfers between funds, regions and policy objectives.
In July 2020, the European Council reached agreement on a package totalling €1.82 trillion for the 2021-2027 Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) and “Next Generation EU” (NGEU) recovery instrument. The NGEU is a temporary instrument designed to boost the recovery in a post-COVID-19 Europe. This is the largest stimulus package ever financed through the EU budget. The NGEU is made up of €750bn, made up of €390bn in grants and €360bn in loans, mostly funding the Recovery and Resilience Facility, but also ReactEU, and supplementary amounts to existing EU budget programmes to fund COVID-related expenditure.
As regards EU budget expenditure in Ireland, this has been and will be channelled through relevant Government Departments and/or directly to beneficiaries, and my Department does not have a leading role in roll-out of such funding.
In addition to the above examples of expenditure, the EU’s temporary Support to mitigate Unemployment Risks in an Emergency (SURE) was set up to provide loans to Member States that need to mobilise significant financial means to fight the negative economic and social consequences of the coronavirus outbreak on their territory. It can provide financial assistance up to €100 billion in the form of loans from the EU to affected Member States to address sudden increases in public expenditure for the preservation of employment.