On Thursday 4 March, the Executive Vice-President of the European Commission, Valdis Dombrovskis, said that the adoption of the national recovery plans within the Next Generation EU recovery plan should not pose any significant difficulties.
“As long as there are no unforeseen events, there is a good chance that the European Commission will be able to recommend the adoption of these plans”, said Mr Dombrovskis during a debate in the European Parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs (see other news).
Most Member States, which have until the end of April to submit their recovery plans to the European Commission, are, for the most part, in prior contact with the European institution to speed up the subsequent formal adoption of the national plans by the Council of the EU.
The Commissioner for Economy, Paolo Gentiloni, identified three elements in these discussions: - Focusing more on future investments and less on the possibility of including retroactive spending (until February 2020) directly related to the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic in the plans. - Increase commitment to implementing the 2019 country-specific socio-economic policy recommendations. - Explain and detail the milestones that will determine the disbursement of aid instalments.
On Thursday, the Conference of the Presidents of the European Parliament’s political groups decided to create the working group that will be tasked with providing an opinion on the national recovery plans, José Manuel Fernandes (EPP, Portugal) told EUROPE. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)