Plenary Session: Draft amending budget (COVID-19)

Draft amending budget No 1/2020: Assistance to Greece in response to increased migration pressure - Immediate measures in the context of the COVID-19 outbreak - Support to post-earthquake reconstruction in Albania - Other adjustments

I voted in favour of this amending budget because, together with the amendment to the MFF regulation, it allows to maximize the resources of the European budget in combating the COVID-19 pandemic.

By amending the regulation, the European Commission stretched the existing Multiannual Financial Framework as much as possible, proposed to use almost all existing special and flexibility instruments and presented an amending budget for 2020.
The 2020 budget adopted by the European Parliament and the Council in November 2019 had left 4.2 billion euros of margins (including special and flexibility instruments). With this package, the EC mobilizes 3 billion euros (of fresh money) in this amending budget and, as 567 million euros had already been mobilised in a first amending budget (DAB1/2020), 633 million remain for 2020.
This is an unprecedented situation in the European budgetary reality and fully justified to better equip the European institutions to fight the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic impacts that will be felt.

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