Neighbourhood Investment Platform (NIP 2023) in favour of the Southern Neighbourhood The Neighbourhood Investment Platform (NIP) is a blending facility, combining European Union grant contributions or financial instruments, with other public and private sector resources such as loans and equity in order to leverage additional non-grant financing. It forms part of the European Fund for Sustainable Development Plus (EFSD+) as foreseen in Article 32 of the NDICI ¿ Global Europe Regulation.The key objective of the NIP is, within the framework of the NDICI ¿ Global Europe Regulation, the EuroMed partnership and the Eastern Partnership, to contribute to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), creating sustainable jobs and infrastructures, and addressing some root causes of migration.To achieve this objective, vital capital investments must be made to rehabilitate, modernise or build essential infrastructures needed for safe and efficient transport of goods and people; enhance food security and resilience to shocks; safe production, transport and consumption of energy; effective environmental protection (in particular to ensure the quality of air, water and soil); sustainable waste management; climate change-related issues, and digital transformation of societies. In addition, capital is need for the provision of basic social services such as health and education; as well as economic growth through the support to private sector development, in particular micro, small, and medium size enterprises (MSMEs).***The NIP Financing Decision provides financial contributions to regional and bilateral projects. For bilateral projects in some countries in the Southern Neighbourhood (Morocco and Tunisia), each NIP contribution agreement is preceded by the signature of a Financing Agreement with the partner country. This ¿courtesy¿ practice is in place for many years, probably as a means for the partner country to ensure its comprehensive view/knowledge of all cooperation projects implemented by the donor community in the country. It also increases the degree of country¿s ownership. DG NEAR therefore manages NIP Financing Decisions with GN and GF commitments.The rather unstable and unpredictable political situation in the Southern Neighbourhood region however imposes some flexibility in the way of committing NIP funding. Indeed, we face cases where budgetary envelopes initially earmarked for projects in a specific country must promptly be reoriented towards other projects in more stable countries (also taking into account the ¿N+1¿ rule). We therefore request the NIP 2023 Financing Decision to be encoded in OPSYS and approved as entailing GN commitments only, with a derogation that could later on allow for some GF commitments to be signed (for projects in countries that require Financing Agreements).