Seven Member States - Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Romania, Poland, Portugal, and Slovenia - have applied for EU loans, in addition to grants, to finance their national recovery plans under the Next Generation EU Recovery Plan.
Of these EU Member States, three have already sought the full loan package available for their recovery plan: Italy has requested €122.6 billion, Romania €14.9 billion, and Greece €12.7 billion.
They cannot apply for new loans to address the economic impact on the EU of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. They can, however, modify their national recovery plans to redirect the reforms and investments initially planned and, as European Commission spokeswoman Veerle Nuyts said on Monday 21 March, they can also “reallocate cohesion funds to the Recovery and Resilience Facility”, the budgetary instrument at the heart of Next Generation EU.
The other four countries’ loan requests are: Poland €12.1 billion (but the Polish recovery plan has not been formally adopted), Portugal €2.7 billion, Slovenia €705 million, and Cyprus €200 million. These four States, plus the twenty others that have not yet applied for a loan under the European Recovery Plan, can activate this option until August 2023.
The European Recovery Plan is endowed with 672.5 billion euros (2018 prices), 312.5 billion in grants and 360 billion in loans. Just under €195 billion in loans remain available, as French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire noted on Tuesday 15 March at the end of the Ecofin Council (see EUROPE 12911/3). (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)