EU Commission only partially OKs Portugal’s last requests for post-pandemic funds

11 months ago 34

The European Commission has only partially approved Portugal’s last two requests under the Recovery and Resilience Plan [PRR], Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa announced on Wednesday, because President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa had vetoed reforms on professional associations.

“The European Commission will shortly announce that it has approved Portugal’s third and fourth payment requests under the Recovery and Resilience Plan [RRP – the EU bazooka funds for post-pandemic recovery],” Costa told reporters in Brussels as he arrived for the EU-Western Balkans summit on Wednesday.

But only “around €2.6 billion will be released”, he said, noting that “Most measures have been recognised as fulfilled and the three that have not” are “in the process of being fulfilled.”

The outgoing prime minister added that one of the measures that remain to be fulfilled for the Commission “has to do with the extremely important reform of professional organisations, which is fundamental to ensuring greater freedom of access to the profession, greater freedom in the exercise of the profession and, above all so that young people have greater opportunities to access regulated professions”.

“As you know, the country’s president vetoed some of these pieces of legislation,” said Costa, who believes that if the country’s parliament approves the legislation vetoed by Rebelo de Sousa, “this will make it possible, in the coming months, to unblock the part of the budget that will not be paid out” while this reform is still being finalised.

There are still two other reforms to be completed, one of which, according to Costa, relates to the diploma for the creation of integrated centres of responsibility in hospitals, which Rebelo de Sousa promulgated on Tuesday – though it “will only come into force on 1 January, so it is only from then on that the reform will be considered to have been completed”.

But decentralisation in the health sector is still missing, even though European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s executive set 6 December as the date for the disbursement of funds.

“Since then, many local councils have signed up, and just last week, the mayor of Porto, who was one of the biggest opponents of this decentralisation process, joined in. At the moment, we’re less than 20 councils away from signing up so that we can receive [what’s missing],” added the Socialist leader.

Portugal is due to receive around €3.4 billion from the third and fourth requests of the RRP, but will only be able to receive the full amount once all the reforms agreed with Brussels have been completed.

With the recent amendment to take account of high inflation and the impact of the war, Portugal’s RRP now stands at €22.2 billion in grants and loans, covering 44 reforms and 117 investments.

So far, with an implementation rate of 17%, Portugal has already received €4.07 billion in grants and €1.07 billion in loans.

(André Ferrão, edited by Nuno Simas | Lusa.pt)