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Member states have made “major headway” in implementing their national recovery and resilience plans
The EU’s deployment of its €723.8 billion Covid-19 recovery fund is “well on track”, according to the European Commission, which said that member states have made “major headway” in implementing national plans for their share.
In a report released on 29 July, the Commission said that it had so far disbursed €100bn from the Recovery and Resilience Facility, which EU member states are using to implement investments and reforms intended to help them recover from the pandemic.
The fund was set up to mitigate the social and economic fallout of the pandemic, and to better prepare the EU for future challenges. It has a particular focus on the bloc’s digital and green-transition goals.
All 25 of the plans approved so far have exceeded the EU’s target of 37 per cent of the money from the fund going to climate measures, with some member states using more than half of their allocation on climate objectives, the Commission reported.
Measures taken on research and innovation include France supporting investments for R&I for the green transition, Portugal targeting R&I to the needs of the agriculture sector and Spain reorganising its public research organisations.
The plans of the Netherlands and Poland have yet to be fully signed off, due to delays caused by a change of government and concerns around the rule of law respectively.