This Thursday, the European Commission mobilized €2.46 billion in grants and loans in the third and fourth payments of the Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR), noting that there is “much work to do” to meet outstanding milestones and targets to achieve.
In a statement released on Thursday, the community council said it had “disbursed the third and fourth combined payments worth 2.46 billion euros in non-refundable financial assistance and loans – excluding pre-financing – to Portugal in the context of the recovery and resilience mechanism”. which funds the national PRR.
Portugal raised these funds after asking Brussels last October for the third request for disbursement of the third and fourth grant tranches (1.77 billion and 820 million euros) and the third and fourth loan tranches (360 million and 22 million euros), related to 47 milestones and objectives of the PRR.
In mid-December, the European Commission gave a provisional ‘green light’ to this payment request from Portugal, after noting, however, that ‘a milestone and an objective regarding the reforms in the healthcare sector and a milestone regarding the reform of healthcare’ regulated appeals had not been achieved satisfactorily,” the institution recalled today, which considered that 44 of the 47 milestones and objectives had been achieved.
“The Commission recognized the measures already taken by Portugal to achieve the outstanding milestones and targets, even though there is still much work to be done,” he stressed.
It is now up to Portugal, in the additional time given by the community council, to achieve these two ongoing milestones and objectives.
Two weeks ago, the institution called for “timely implementation” of the Portuguese PRR, on the day it announced that Portugal had missed two milestones and a target for the third and fourth payments.
For this reason, the European Commission at the time “activated the payment suspension procedure, […] a procedure that gives Member States additional time to achieve outstanding interim objectives, while at the same time receiving a partial payment linked to interim objectives that have been satisfactorily achieved,” the institution explains.
Portugal now has the right to submit its comments to the Commission within one month (until mid-January) and, if, following such contacts, the Community administration confirms its assessment that the outstanding objectives and targets have not been satisfactorily achieved, it will determining the payment should be suspended, after which the country will have a period of six months to satisfactorily meet the remaining targets.
Regarding the positive preliminary assessment, the amount mobilized today comes following the approval of the Economic and Financial Committee (advisory body composed of senior officials from national governments and central banks, the European Central Bank and the Commission), related to the progress in the PRR on areas such as financing public procurement, healthcare, the tax or cadastral system and public procurement, or even ‘major investments’ in the areas of healthcare, forests, social protection, innovation, sustainable mobility, digital skills, culture, public finance and public administration .
Portugal’s PRR now amounts to €22.2 billion in grants and loans and includes 44 reforms and 117 investments.
Without counting the funds today, Portugal has already received 4.07 billion euros in grants and 1.07 billion in loans thanks to a 17% foreclosure rate.
Source: DN
