Portugal is to receive €13.2 billion in grants until 2023 under the European Post-Crisis Recovery Fund because of Covid-19 to make investments under the Resilience Facility, the European Commission said on Thursday.
Calculation tables released by the EU executive and seen by Lusa, state that under the Recovery and Resilience Mechanism, Portugal is expected to get nearly €13.2 billion in grants by 2023.
This amount – divided into two tranches, one of €9.1 billion and another of €4.1 billion – is part of a total of €15.3 billion that the country will receive from Brussels under the Recovery Fund, as disclosed by the government last July.
Agreed by European leaders at a historic European Council in July, this fund is budgeted at €750 billion (between grants and loans to countries).
Also on Thursday, the European Commission proposed that the European Union (EU) member states invest, within the framework of their recovery and resilience plans, in investments in “flagship areas” such as clean technologies, digitalisation and training.
At stake are the next steps announced today on the mechanism of recovery and resilience post-crisis generated by the Covid-19 pandemic.
€672.5 billion (in loans and grants) will be allocated to this instrument already next year for investments in member states to increase their economic growth potential, job creation and economic and social resilience, at the same time as they realize the green and digital transitions.
The plans have to be sent by the countries to Brussels by mid-October and then assessed directly by the European Commission’s working group that will coordinate the recovery plan and the Directorate-General for Economic and Financial Affairs.
Last week in Brussels, the government said Portugal wants to be among the first EU countries to have a recovery and resilience plan presented, discussed and approved to access European funds as early as 2021.
“Our goal is very simple: to establish the best possible conditions, both from a programmatic and practical point of view, so that the dialogue with the European Commission allows the plan to be one of the first to be presented, discussed and approved,” foreign minister, Augusto Santos Silva, said in declarations to journalists in Brussels.
This is the strategic document in which Portugal is to report on the reforms and investments it intends to make using the ‘slice’ of nearly €15 billion that will fall to it from the post-Covid-19 EU Recovery Fund, agreed on last July.
Augusto Santos Silva said last week that among the Portuguese executive’s priorities are issues such as strengthening health systems, investing in infrastructure and industrial and economic capacity, increasing territorial cohesion and the ability to compete internationally, achieving the climate transition and also public administration reform.
