Portugal Wants to Be One of the First EU Countries to Have a Recovery Plan Approved

Portugal wants to be one the first countries in the European Union (EU) to have a recovery and resilience plan presented to access the European funds from early 2021.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Augusto Santos Silva, said that “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, the first to be discussed and approved.”

The Recovery and Resilience Plan is the strategic document in which Portugal will 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.

“The initial and preliminary version of the national resilience plans can be presented in mid-October,” said the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

The final version, which results from the dialogue between Portugal and the European institutions, will be delivered at the beginning of next year, according to Augusto Santos Silva.

Accompanied by the Minister of Planning, Nelson de Souza, and the Secretary of State for Finance, João Nunes Mendes, Augusto Santos Silva stressed that this is an opportunity that neither the country nor Europe can miss.

He said that among the priorities of the Portuguese executive are issues such as strengthening health systems, investment in infrastructure, industrial and economic capacity, increasing territorial cohesion, and the ability to compete internationally, achieving the climate transition and also public administration reform.

From the Recovery Fund, € 390 billion will be allocated in non-repayable transfers, and the remaining € 360 billion in the form of loans, with Portugal raising around € 15 billion in non-repayable funds.

READ FULL ARTICLE

---