European Commission Executive Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis maintained the objective of making the first payments of EU financial support to Member States whose national recovery plans are approved on time “in July” on Monday 10 May at the first dialogue organised by the European Parliament on the implementation of the Recovery and Resilience Facility, the budgetary instrument at the heart of the Next Generation EU Recovery Plan.
To date, 14 EU countries have officially submitted their national recovery plans (see EUROPE 12712/14, EUROPE 12711/2), Mr Dombrovskis said, adding that the remaining countries are expected do so “in the second half of May or early June”.
The Commission has 2 months to assess each plan and transcribe them into legislation. According to Mr Dombrovskis, the Commission will be able to submit first recommendations in the “second half of June”.
The EU Council will then have 1 month to formally approve the first national plans. If all 27 Member States ratify the ‘own resources to the EU budget’ decision, the Commission will be able to make the first payments up to 13% (pre-financing threshold). It could even pay more by the end of 2021, if a country meets its commitments in line with the milestones set out in its national plan, Mr Dombrovskis indicated, replying to a question by Eider Gardiazabal (S&D, Spain).
At this stage, “eight Member States” have yet to ratify the ‘own resources’ decision and “three” of them could do so “this week”, the Executive Vice-President said.
Asked about the quality of the national plans by Valérie Hayer (Renew Europe, France), and in particular about the level of ambition of the States in terms of “reforms” by Siegfried Mureșan (EPP, Romania) and Luis Garicano (Renew Europe, Spain), both Mr Dombrovskis and the European Commissioner for the Economy, Paolo Gentiloni, considered that after “intensive consultations”, “overall good balance between investment and reforms has been found”, even if some countries had initially failed to deliver on reforms.
The former Italian Prime Minister did not hide the existence of a risk between a national plan, as written on paper, and its realisation on the ground. “From my point of view, the main challenge is whether what is written will really happen and according to the timeline”, he said, without naming the countries potentially concerned.
The targets for green (37% of the plan’s financial envelope) and digital (20%) transitions “will be met, in some cases with a good margin”, noted Mr Dombrovskis. He also described the social dimension of the plans as “strong” and promised that the declaration adopted at the Porto Summit would guide the implementation of the Facility (see EUROPE 12716/3).
As such, a working group of the three EU institutions will meet for the first time on 17 May. It will be responsible for drafting two delegated acts, one on the methodology for monitoring social expenditure, the other on a ‘scoreboard’ to provide a regular overview of the European Recovery Plan.
Asked by José Manuel Fernandes (EPP, Portugal) about the loans that can be granted under the Facility, Mr Gentiloni said that “seven to eight” countries are expected to make use of it. He recommended waiting until there is a clear picture of the situation before calculating a possible budgetary margin of manoeuvre, and to determine whether the ‘loan’ component of the Facility is fully used, recalling that states have until August 2023 to request such loans.
Ultimately, the Facility, according to the Commission, could lead to an annual growth surplus of “2% of GDP” by 2026 and help create “2 million jobs”. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)