After delays at the beginning of 2023, due in particular to the inclusion of ‘REPowerEU’ chapters in the post-Covid-19 recovery plans of the Member States of the European Union, the implementation of these national recovery plans has speeded up, as have the related disbursements of EU financial aid, notes the European Commission in its annual report on the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF), the budgetary instrument of the Next Generation EU recovery plan, published on Thursday 10 October.
By the end of August, the EU institution had paid out €265.4 billion – of which €170.8 billion in grants and €94.6 billion in loans – compared with a total of €153.4 billion at the same time in 2023. At this rate, it estimates that half of the budget will be disbursed by the end of 2024, and it is confident that by the end of 2026 all the grants will have been used. Regarding the loans, however, it cannot be ruled out that the entire envelope will not be used, as some countries have been late in activating this form of support.
Having taken account of the observations made, the Commission has amended its guidelines to speed up the use of funds (see EUROPE 13422/15). In this respect, it notes that the partial suspension procedure, which allows funds to be paid out by giving the beneficiary six months to finalise a required measure, has been very successful, particularly in Portugal.
The Commission has also analysed the information provided by all the Member States on the biggest beneficiaries of their national recovery plans. While the regulations require transparency on the 100 largest beneficiaries, Bulgaria and Malta provided a list containing only 19 and 31 beneficiary entities respectively. Despite the heterogeneity of the type of beneficiary and the sums received, the EU institution notes that public entities make up around two-thirds of the main beneficiaries of a national recovery plan.
Finally, with regard to monitoring compliance with the reforms and investments set out in a recovery plan, the Commission has audited 82 of the 748 milestones for which Member States requested payment in 2023 and has carried out 10 ex-post audits of compliance with these milestones. It found no evidence that the audited milestones had not been met.
On the same day, the European Court of Auditors expressed reservations about spending under the RRF (see other news).
See the Commission’s annual report: https://aeur.eu/f/dtt (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)