The European Commission has not yet received Portugal’s revised Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR) for the reprogramming of funds and projects, but it will be guaranteed to cooperate with the Portuguese authorities and not foresee any “specific problems”.
“We are experiencing technical delays in implementation [dos planos de recuperação] in many countries, but I don’t see any specific problems, both for debt sustainability and for the PRR,” said Paolo Gentiloni, European Commissioner for Economy.
Responding to a question from Lusa at a press conference for the presentation of the spring economic forecasts in Brussels, the official said the European Commission is “cooperating with the Portuguese authorities”.
The spokeswoman of the municipal council for economic and financial affairs, Veerle Nuyts, also referred to the occasion that “Portugal has not yet presented a revised plan”.
The Portuguese government has already revealed that it is in talks with the European Commission for the reprogramming of the PRR in terms of funds and adjustment of projects, with the hope that this will be completed this year.
A source close to the process explained to Lusa that Portugal must first complete the renegotiation of the plan with the European Commission, including the chapter on investments in the REPowerEU energy package, before submitting the next request for payment.
So far, Portugal has already received the first two payments, amounting to EUR 1.82 billion in February 2023 and EUR 1.16 billion in May 2022, amounts to which will be added EUR 2.2 billion in pre-financing in August 2021, amounts including grants and loans.
The country has so far raised 31% of the total funds, a total of 5.14 billion euros.
Such disbursements come after the Community administration considered that Portugal had fulfilled the 52 phases and six objectives associated with its first and second payment requests.
The Portuguese PRR has a total allocation of €16.6 billion, €13.9 billion in grants and €2.7 billion in loans.
The Recovery and Resilience Mechanism entered into force in the EU in February 2021 to mitigate the economic and social impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Last week, a report from the Public Finance Council (CFP) revealed that the implementation of the PRR in 2022 was close to €800 million, which remains “well below expectations”.
“In the second year of implementation of the PRR, the 2022 implementation approached €800 million (0.3% of GDP), less than a quarter of the OE2022 forecast [Orçamento do Estado para 2022]”, indicated the report on the “Budget evolution of public services in 2022” of the CFP.
According to the organization, public investments financed by the PRR amounted to 290 million euros of the 1,216 million euros foreseen in the OE2022 (implementation rate of 24%).
Source: DN
