Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council amending Council Regulation (EC) No 1083/2006 as regards repayable assistance and financial engineering

Article 28(3) of Council Regulation (EC) 1260/1999 identified the various forms of assistance that could be provided through Structural Funds contributions, namely "non repayable direct assistance […] as well as other forms, such as repayable assistance, an interest-rate subsidy, a guarantee, an equity holding, a venture-capital holding or another form of finance".

Council Regulation (EC) 1083/2006 does not, by contrast, provide a definition of assistance as either repayable or non-repayable. The Regulation contains in Article 44 provisions for "Financial Engineering Instruments".

These provisions are, in the current programming period, rather narrow as they allow financing of expenditure in respect of an operation comprising contributions to support a) financial engineering instruments for enterprises, b) urban development funds and c) funds or other incentive schemes for energy efficiency and use of renewable energy in buildings.

As a result, strictly speaking - and without prejudice to provisions of Article 11 of Council Regulation (EC) 1081/2006, which already provides that assistance can take the form of reimbursable grant – repayable assistance seems not to be covered by the applicable Regulation.

Member States have continued to use repayable forms of assistance based on the positive experience of the past programming period 2000-2006 and some also included descriptions of these systems in their 2007-2013 programming documents, which were approved by the Commission. Furthermore, such schemes have also been started anew in the current programming period in some Member States.

It is therefore necessary to introduce a general definition of repayable assistance in the Regulation (EC) 1083/2006 and further provide that the assistance repaid shall be kept in a separate account and reused to the same purpose or in line with the objectives of the programme.

EUR-Lex: COM(2011)483: Follow the progress of this document through the decision-making procedure http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/HIS/?uri=COM:2011:483:FIN

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