During the 9^th December 2022 meeting of the Joint Monitoring Committee (JMC) of the Cross-border Cooperation Programme 2014-2020, the following decisions were made relating Russian military aggression against Ukraine and Belarusian involvement in that:

• to decrease the maximum European Union’s co-financing for the Belarusian partners to the level of pre-financing already paid;
• to deem the amounts due to Belarusian partners (covering the expenditure incurred and paid before 24^th February 2022), which cannot be paid due to the Financing Agreement’s suspension, ineligible;
• to use the 100% co-financing mechanism for expenditure included in the annual accounts for the accounting years starting 1^st July 2021, 1^st July 2022 and 1^st July 2023 respectively in accordance with article 3 of the Regulation (EU) 2022/2192  of the European Parliament and of the Council of 9^th November 2022 laying down specific provisions for the 2014-2020 cooperation programmes supported by the European Neighbourhood Instrument and under the European territorial cooperation goal, following programmes implementation disruption;
• to implement by the Managing Authority a simplified procedure of direct recover from partners based on article 14 of the Regulation (EU) 2022/2192;
• in relation PL-BY projects that have not started:

• decision not to start projects;
• expiry of grant agreements for such projects.
  
  
• the PL-UA projects that could not be finalised due to the lack of funds from the Ukrainian side will be settled based on activities which have been carried out;

Present at the JMC meeting, the European Commission’s representative stressed that no expenditure may be accepted from Belarusian partners (even from before the cut-off date, i.e. before 24.02.2022) if it was not fully controlled and audited.

Savings generated by the suspension of cooperation with Belarus and the above decisions will be used to finance projects addressing the migratory challenges. The JMC will decide on their selection.