The First Vice President and Minister of Economy, Trade and Business, Carlos Cuerpo, announced this Wednesday that he will "imminently" send an technical addendum to the Recovery Plan in July, in order to refine the wording of the pending milestones with the European Commission and thus avoid the loss of European funds in the final stretch of the program.
Cuerpo made this announcement during his speech at the Joint Committee (Congress and Senate) of the EU, where he reported on the status of the funds authorized by the European Commission for the recovery and transformation of the Spanish economy after the crisis caused by the pandemic.
In particular, the Minister of Economy explained that the Executive plans to present this addendum to clarify the formulation of the milestones that remain to be closed, so that they can be evaluated within the seventh and final disbursement request, scheduled for the end of the year, which would be sent to Brussels in September and would arrive in Spain in December.
"We have to finish closing with the utmost effort the elements that still remain pending in these months," emphasized Carlos Cuerpo.
"No ambition will be lost" in the Recovery Plan
During his appearance, Cuerpo insisted that the presentation of this addendum does not imply a reduction in the ambition of the milestones included in the Recovery Plan. He recalled that the European Commission will only give the green light to the modification if the level of demand of the milestones not yet met remains intact.
The minister stressed that this condition by the community institutions acts as a guarantee that the quality of the recovery plan is not deteriorated, neither in its requirements nor in its goals. In this regard, he reiterated that the new technical addendum will "simplify" the milestones, but will not reduce them.
He reiterated that the purpose of this adjustment is to facilitate the Commission's work in verifying the degree of compliance with the established milestones and objectives, streamlining the certification and approval process for the different phases of the Spanish plan.
More than 7,000 million in the sixth disbursement
Cuerpo recalled that the European Commission authorized on July 2 the request for the sixth disbursement of the Recovery Plan, for a total amount of 7,021 million euros, of which 5,970 million correspond to transfers and 1,051 million to loans.
At the same time, he has explained that 537 million euros linked to three milestones of this sixth tranche remain temporarily suspended, the degree of compliance of which the Commission has not yet been able to verify. These are milestones 301 (bilingual vocational training), 322 (telecare services), and 346 (projects aimed at vulnerable groups, entrepreneurs, or micro-enterprises).
The first vice-president also detailed that 302 million that had been left out of the previous disbursement have been incorporated into this sixth payment. Specifically, 25 million have been released after the full compliance of milestone 167 (digitalization in regional and local entities), and another 277 million euros in additional loans associated with a greater degree of execution of milestone 388, related to tax reform.
With this sixth disbursement request, Cuerpo has highlighted that "Spain reinforces its leadership" in the execution of European funds, given that "we would have requested and received, once we receive it in the coming weeks, 76% of the total funds available for our country in terms of grants and loans".
Almost 70,000 million already injected into the economy
In his speech, Carlos Cuerpo pointed out that 68,534 million euros from the European funds that Spain has been receiving have already been channeled to various companies and agents of the national economy.
The 68,534 million represent about 1,500 million more than the figure that the vice-president himself communicated three months ago. He specified that around 70% of the beneficiaries of these resources are micro and small enterprises, which have so far captured close to 40% of the European funds allocated to Spain.
Likewise, he indicated that, of the total European resources, 95,423 million euros have already been called for, of which the majority (56,923 million) corresponds to calls launched by the General State Administration. As for the autonomous communities, slightly more than 18,000 million out of the 25,050 million called for have been resolved, while local entities have resolved 9,544 million out of the 13,450 million euros launched.