Financial Instruments – Overview of changes in Title IV of the CPR following the Omnibus Regulation

Financial instruments play an increasingly important role in delivering the ESI Funds. In the context of the Investment Plan for Europe, it is essential to ensure that the legal framework is adapted to facilitate the use of financial instruments more widely and when appropriate.

On 2 August 2018, Regulation (EU, Euratom) 2018/1046 of the European Parliament and of the Council (the Omnibus Regulation) on the financial rules applicable to the general budget of the Union came into force, repealing the previous Financial Regulation No 966/2012 and introducing changes to several sectoral regulations, including a limited number of targeted changes for financial instruments (FIs) in Title IV of Regulation (EU) No 1303/2013 (CPR).1

The changes are meant to facilitate implementation of FIs and have the following main objectives:

• to take better account of the Investment Plan for Europe, which was launched after the adoption of the CPR in November 2014, and in particular to allow smooth interaction and complementarity between support from the ESI Funds and the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI);  to clarify the provisions related to the selection of bodies implementing ESIF financial instruments;
• to maintain for the whole programming period the implementation option of the SME Initiative – initially intended to be a crisis response instrument of more limited duration;
• other technical changes to facilitate implementation, including in relation to ex ante assessment, audit, replacement of expenditure for individual irregularities, treasury management and reporting.