Green light to the changes introduced by the Government in Spain's Recovery and Resilience Plan. Yesterday, the European Commission gave its approval to the addendum to the original program sent by Moncloa to Brussels in June, a decision that opens the door to the delivery of more than 93.5 billion euros, most of it in the form of soft loans.
The regulations for the Next Generation EU funds allowed member states, as their implementation progressed, to request changes to the plans agreed upon with the Community Executive when designing the plans in 2021 as long as it was justified by “objective circumstances.” The impact of the war in Ukraine on energy prices has been the main variable assessed by Brussels to accept changes in 52 milestones or reforms that appeared in the initial version of the plan.
Thus, as La Vanguardia reported, Brussels has agreed, for example, to replace the promise of implementing tolls on state-dependent highways with a support plan for the transport of goods by rail. This measure “has been replaced by provisions that promote the use of road rail transport to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” explained yesterday the Community Executive's Economy spokesperson, Veerle Nuyts, who recalled that the next measure has also been assessed. entry into force of a reform of the emissions trading system that already plans to tax road transport.
Although the review of the addendum to the Spanish Recovery Plan must still be ratified by Ecofin (EU Council of Economy Ministers), the Government should not wait for this procedure to be completed to request the disbursement of the fourth tranche of aid. Next Generation EU funds reserved for Spain, explain community sources. These disbursements are linked to one of the most delicate political decisions of the last legislature, the pension reform. Although Brussels has not commented on the matter, the Government worked in contact with community technicians and is confident that the sustainability criteria incorporated will satisfy the Commission.
The decision adopted yesterday unlocks access to more than 10.3 billion euros in non-refundable funds. On the one hand, in an item of 7.7 billion euros (the amount resulting from reviewing the figures of the initial plan with the real figure of the fall in GDP, which was greater than expected due to the pandemic), and, on the other, of some 2,644 million euros from RePowerEU (the program launched to reduce dependence on fossil fuels).
At the time, unlike, for example, Italy, the other major beneficiary of Next Generation EU funds, Spain decided to concentrate the disbursements of the subsidies in the first years and leave the application for soft loans for a second phase. That moment has arrived and at the end of last year the Government announced that it would resort to the credits provided for in the European program to access financing on more advantageous conditions than those currently offered by the markets. Of the 84,000 million euros available, Madrid announced in December that it would request about 83,500 million.
These amounts, added to the 69,500 million already approved in 2021, raise the total aid to Spain in exchange for compliance with the Recovery Plan to 163,000 million euros (around 80,000 in non-refundable aid and 83,000 in loans). To date, it is the only Member State that, in addition to having requested the disbursement of the first three tranches of aid, has already collected the aid after Brussels validated compliance with the agreed measures. However, the decision to take advantage of the possibility of reviewing the plan, as other countries have done, has resulted in a delay of five months in the process, and the deadline to execute the funds expires in August 2026, hence Brussels has recommended to the Government that it strengthen its administrative capacity to expedite disbursements.
