The call for early elections tightens the times for the execution of European funds

The Government will approve on Tuesday the addendum to the Recovery Plan to send it to Brussels, meeting the deadlines

MADRID, 4 Jun. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The call for early general elections on July 23 puts the execution of milestones and objectives of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan in the spotlight, whose deadline to commit non-reimbursable aid ends on December 31 of this year.

"The norms of the --European--regulation are very clear," sources from the Executive assure Europa Press. So far, Spain has received 37,036 million euros, the equivalent of 53% of the total that corresponds to it in the form of non-reimbursable transfers, which amounts to 69,528 million euros from the Recovery Plan.

Throughout 2023, the Plan's roadmap provides for two other payments amounting to 10,000 million euros and 7,000 million euros from European funds. The Executive ensures that it will request "as soon as possible" the fourth payment of these resources of 10,000 million upon completion of the second part of the pension reform.

After this, the disbursements will be completed with three annual payments expected of 8,000 million euros in June 2024, 3,500 million euros in June 2025 and 4,000 million euros in December 2026.

But before that, December 31 of this year is the deadline for committing non-reimbursable aid. According to the latest Execution report, published in February, Spain would have executed 75% of the European funds provided for in the 2021 and 2022 Budgets, while there would be 90% of authorized credits and 81% committed.

In addition, according to the head of Economic Affairs, the deployment of these funds would have accelerated notably in the first quarter of 2023, with more than 10,757 million euros authorized. This volume of authorized funds is equivalent to almost 40% of the 28,692 million budgeted for the entire financial year 2023.

The Government has been holding meetings with the regional governments, parliamentary groups and social agents for months to prepare the addendum to the Recovery Plan, with which an additional 7,700 million euros will be mobilized in transfers and 84,000 million euros in loans, that will be added to the 70,000 million euros of the first phase of the Plan.

At the end of the year, the Minister of Economic Affairs, Nadia Calviño presented a first draft of this addendum, on which the Executive continues to work in order to approve its final and formal version next Tuesday to send it to Brussels. According to the regulation, the deadline for submitting this addendum would be August 31 of this year.

But Spain has already formally submitted the loan request to the European Commission. With these resources and the additional transfers, the Government intends to concentrate investments and reforms on promoting industrialization and strategic autonomy in the fields of energy, agri-food, industrial, technological and digital, reinforcing investments in the 12 strategic projects (Perte ) already approved and underway.

In addition, the first vice president has already advanced that the news of this final version of the addendum will include a fund of 1,000 million euros for the "modernization and sustainability" of the tourism sector.