COVID 19: amendment to regulations (EU) no. 1301/2013 and (EU) no. 1303/2013 – specific measures exceptional flexibility in the use of European structural and investment funds

With regulation 558/2020 the European Parliament and the Council of Europe have made changes to regulations (EU) no. 1301/2013 and (EU) no. 1303/2013 so that Member States can rapidly mobilize the resources available to respond to the COVID-19 outbreak on the resources available for 2020 programming, exceptionally exempting Member States from thematic concentration requirements for the remainder.

Therefore, companies receiving support in accordance with the temporary framework for State aid measures or with Regulations (EU) no. 1407/2013, n. 1408/2013 and n. 717/2014 of the Commission are not considered as companies in difficulty.The exceptional measures for the use of ESI Funds in response to the COVID-19 epidemic provide, at the request of a Member State, the co-financing rate of 100% declared in the payment applications in the accounting period starting from 1 July 2020 until 30 June 2021 for one or more priority axes of a program supported by the ERDF, the ESF or the Cohesion Fund.

In addition, always upon request, the resources available for the programming of the year 2020 for the Investment for growth and employment objective can be transferred between ERDF, ESF and the Cohesion Fund regardless of the previously established percentages.

The deadline for submitting the annual implementation report of the program is set as at 30 September 2020 for all ESI funds. The deadline for submitting the summary report may therefore be postponed accordingly.

In cases where financial instruments provide support to SMEs in the form of working capital, new or updated business plans are not required in the context of supporting documents or equivalent documents, nor evidence to verify that the support provided through the financial instrument was used for the intended purposes.