Debate: Implementation of the Recovery and Resilience Facility
Date: WEDNESDAY, 22 JUNE 2022
Speaker: Siegfried Mureşan
Country: Germany
Language: EN

We have together adopted legislation one year ago, and since then 26 of the 27 Member States of the Union have put forward their national recovery plans, and 22 of the 27 Member States have received the 13% pre-financing before the end of last year and are now in the process of implementing the plans and presenting the milestones and targets fulfilled to the European institutions and are also in the process of receiving the next tranches. This instrument was launched to help those affected by the pandemic, but also to improve the resilience of our economies, of our public systems, to make our hospitals more modern, to enlarge capacities, to digitalise the education system. We have established clear rules at European level – a clear direction, six pillars into which money can flow, clear rules at European level – but also allowed for flexibility for the priorities of Member States, knowing that the needs differ from Member State to Member State. Eider Gardiazabal, Dragoş Pîslaru and myself as the three co-rapporteurs are putting now before this House the first implementation report in which we are issuing the opinion of the Parliament on the plans, on the assessment done by the European Commission and the process so far. And we are concluding that the Recovery and Resilience Facility has already made a positive contribution to the recovery of the European economy following COVID. It already has a positive contribution to the development of our economies, upon growth, and we expect its impact upon growth and upon job creation to increase in the months to come. Once adopted, a national plan needs to be implemented. It should not be changed and amended on a permanent basis. This is why, in the European legislation, we have allowed for amendments and changes to the plans only on an objective basis. No to political changes. But the illegitimate invasion of Russian armed forces into Ukraine changes a lot in the European economy. And this is why if Member States intend to make investments in improving energy efficiency, reducing dependency on Russia, investing in renewables, in new sources of energy, in energy infrastructure in the Member State, in a way in which this helps the whole European Union, I believe we should facilitate this. Food safety, food security: we have also seen we will be missing imports of agricultural products from Ukraine. We have to do everything we can to increase production here at home, at European level. If Member States intend to amend their plans into these directions, I believe we should be open. Our report underlines that this is an instrument for investments, but also reforms, and it underlines that the implementation of the country—specific recommendations, of the reforms agreed by the Commission and the governments, will strengthen the economies, will make them more resilient. We would like to see more cross-border projects, particularly in the area of energy, because this will help us to bring the energy from where we have it to where we need it. Commissioner, we will also work with the Commission and with the governments of Member States to make sure that the loans which were not yet accessed by some Member States will be accessed and preferably in areas which are linked to reducing the energy dependence. The European Parliament also expects that local and regional authorities be involved properly, because the amounts of money are big, the time is short. The Recovery and Resilience Facility can much better be implemented together with local and regional authorities. And one last thing: transparency and control. The European Union will spend more money than ever from its traditional budget and from the Recovery and Resilience Facility in the next years together. The more we spend, the more we need to make sure that money really reaches the beneficiaries for which it is intended; strong goals for the European Public Prosecutor, for OLAF, Europol, Eurojust, to make sure that money really reaches people in need and that the rule of law is observed before any payment is made from the Recovery and Resilience Facility. We are united as a Parliament. Thank you, Eider, thank you Dragoş for the very good cooperation. Many thanks to the shadow rapporteurs of the other groups as well.