Today has seen yet more ‘anticipation’ over the arrival of the almost €17 billion in resilience and recovery funding from Brussels – the long-dubbed ‘bazooka’.
Europe’s Economic and Financial Affairs Council (ECOFIN) has approved 12 countries’ PRRs (plans for resilience and recovery), Portugal’s included, which means this country will start receiving money ‘very soon’.
The number of stories heralding the arrival of this money may be designed more to give the European Commission a PR boost, but what we’re being told today is that the first tranche of €2.1 billion (equivalent to 13% of the funds Portugal will be receiving) should be coming through by the end of the month, or early August.
The funding comes as part of the Commission’s NextGenerationEU package.
Also with their PRRs ‘approved’ are Germany, Austria, Belgium, Slovakia, Spain, Denmark, France, Greece, Italy, Latvia and Luxembourg.
Between now and the funds’ arrival, financing agreements have to be forged between all the various countries’ governments.
These will “regulate the transfer of the grants (non-refundable part of the financing package), and of the ‘loans’.
This PRR funding is on top of other money due as part of the seven-year EU budget (‘multiannual financial framework’) taking the bloc from 2021-2027.
Once the PRR financing agreements have been concluded, there may be further news stories about this money that everyone has been promised for over a year now, the arrival of which seems to be taking forever…
