Since the beginning of August, the European Commission has provided eight Member States with pre-financing of up to 13% of their national plan under the Next Generation EU Recovery Plan.
The Member States are as follows: - Italy received 24.9 billion euros (out of total EU funding of 68.9 billion euros in the form of grants and 122.6 billion in loans); - Spain received 9 billion euros (out of a total EU funding of 69.5 billion euros in grants); - France received 5.1 billion euros (out of a total EU funding of 39.4 billion euros in grants); - Greece received 4 billion euros (out of total EU funding of 17.8 billion in grants and 12.7 billion in loans); - Portugal received 2.2 billion euros (out of a total of 13.9 billion euros in grants and 2.7 billion in loans); - Belgium received 770 million euros (out of a total of 5.9 billion euros in grants); - Lithuania received 289 million euros (out of a total of 2.22 billion euros); - Luxembourg received 12.1 million euros (out of a total of 93.4 million euros).
Pre-financing payment is dependent on the finalisation of specific budgetary arrangements between the Commission and an EU country whose national plan has been adopted by the EU Council.
In June and December 2021, to finance the European Recovery Plan, the Commission will raise around 80 billion long term EU-bonds and tens of billions of short term EU-bills to diversify the nature of the investors (see EUROPE 12731/21).
At this stage, the EU Council has formally adopted 16 National Recovery Plans (see EUROPE 12761/1, 12769/1). The Commission has approved the Czech (see EUROPE 12765/16) and Irish (see EUROPE 12764/15) plans. It is assessing the plans of seven other Member States: Estonia, Finland, Malta, Romania, Sweden plus Hungary and Poland.
The assessment of the Hungarian and Polish plans could last until the end of September, according to Commission Executive Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis, partly because of disagreements over the mechanisms in place to protect the EU’s financial interests (see EUROPE 12769/1).
Bulgaria and the Netherlands have not yet submitted their national recovery plans at European level. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)