This article is brought to you in association with the European Parliament.
MEPs approved extra aid for EU regions to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic and its social and health care consequences.
Parliament has approved REACT-EU, a 47.5 billion EUR package to help mitigate the immediate effects of the COVID-19 crisis across EU regions. The initiative was adopted by 654 votes in favour, 23 against and 17 abstentions.
The aid will be made available through the EU Structural Funds, with 37.5 billion EUR assigned for 2021 and 10 billion EUR for 2022. Operations covered by REACT-EU will be eligible for funding from 1 February 2020, retroactively. The resources can be spent until the end of 2023.
EU countries will be able to allocate part of the money to the European Social Fund, the Fund for European Aid to the Most Deprived (FEAD), the Youth Employment Initiative, as well as cross-border programmes (Interreg). Investments will be focused on the sectors most affected by the economic fallout of the pandemic.
Details on the political agreement reached by EU legislators on 18 November are available here.
Background
REACT-EU is a European Commission proposal to address the economic and social impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, in the form of an amendment to the Common Provisions Regulation, which governs the 2014-2020 cohesion policy programming period.
It follows two earlier proposals relating to cohesion policy: the Coronavirus Response Investment Initiative (CRII) and the Coronavirus Response Initiative Plus (CRII+), which both modified the rules for regional spending in order to facilitate recovery. Resources for REACT-EU will come from Next Generation EU, the European Union recovery instrument.
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