The European Commission has not yet received Portugal’s revised Recovery and Resilience Plan (RRP) for the reprogramming of funds and projects, but it guaranteed to be in cooperation with the Portuguese authorities and not foresee “specific problems”.
“We have technical delays in the 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 European Commissioner for the Economy Paolo Gentiloni.
In response to a question from Lusa at a press conference on the occasion of the presentation of the spring economic forecasts, in Brussels, the official said that the European Commission is “cooperating with the Portuguese authorities.”
The community executive spokesperson for economic and financial affairs, Veerle Nuyts, also said on the occasion that “Portugal has not yet submitted 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 adequacy of projects, hoping that it 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 investment chapter in the REPowerEU energy package, before presenting the next payment request.
Portugal has already received the first two payments so far, amounting to 1,820 million euros in February 2023 and 1,160 million euros in May 2022, amounts to which are added 2,200 million euros of pre-financing in August 2021, amounts including grants and loans
Up to now, the country has captured 31% of the total funds, in a total of 5,140 million euros. These disbursements occur after the community executive considered that Portugal had met the 52 stages and the six objectives linked to its first and second payment request.
The Portuguese PRR has a total endowment of €16.6 billion, €13.9 billion in grants and €2.7 billion in loans.
The Recovery and Resilience Facility 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 execution of the PRR was close to 800 million euros in 2022, continuing “well below expectations”.
“In the second year of implementation of the PRR, the execution for 2022 was close to 800 million euros (0.3% of GDP), less than a quarter of what was foreseen in SO2022 [Orçamento do Estado para 2022]”, indicates the report on the “Budgetary Evolution of Public Administrations in 2022” of the CFP.
According to the organization, the public investment financed by the PRR amounted to 290 million euros of the 1,216 million euros foreseen in the OE2022 (execution degree of 24%)”.
Source: TSF
