Debate: The state of play on the submitted RRF recovery plans awaiting approval
Date: WEDNESDAY, 6 OCTOBER 2021
Speaker: Paolo Gentiloni
Language: EN

But the good thing is that pre-financing began to flow in July and August, exactly at the moment when the recovery was – at least if we look at growth rates – underway. This means that we know that these funds will not be used mainly for emergency purposes. For these purposes, the national reactions were already there, also thanks to the decisions taken by the ECB and the European institutions in 2020. These funds will be used to give an added value to encourage reforms and investments and to strengthen our transitions – the green transition, the digital transition – and the resilience of our societies. This is only to say that this package is very important and, I think, overall it is well perceived by citizens and, for sure, well perceived by financial markets. The fact that we have these common initiatives contributed to stability in financial markets – of course, with the ECB intervention – and extraordinary programmes. So a certain pride, I think, is fully justified, because it was not obvious that this unprecedented instrument would have been fully in practice now, and it is. We also have very positive experiences with another part of this recovery strategy. That was the SURE mechanism, with 19 Member States using these loans and supporting more than 30 million European workers with short—time work schemes or similar. So I think this is something that had a positive impact in our economies, of course together with the national reactions, and it is not by chance that we had, at least in the second quarter, a very strong rebound, even stronger than happened in the second quarter in China and in the US, and we also still have a good perspective for the third quarter, despite difficulties that are emerging, as you know, in supply chains and in energy prices. But overall, this recovery is underway and, when we talk about the Recovery and Resilience Facility, I think we should consider this. Of course, we are not yet out of the woods, for several reasons, and the attention of the Parliament for the further implementation of the plan and for the national plans that are still missing from the point of view of the Commission assessment is fully justified, and this attention will continue in the next months in the implementation phase. We will begin to receive the first requests for disbursement based not on the pre-financing but on the performance milestones and targets reached, and this will also be very challenging for the Commission and in our dialogue. Our dialogue is structured in a rather formal way, which we discussed a lot when we introduced the new regulation and legislation. We are trying to do our best to use this structural dialogue in the best way possible, with our regular exchanges with Commissioners and with the regular exchanges with the European Parliament Working Group. A week ago, we had the 14th meeting of this European Parliament Working Group with the Commission services that are working on the assessment of the remaining plans. So I think that the Parliament is informed according to the methodology that we agreed for this kind of structural dialogue about the plans. Let me add only a couple of remarks. First, all plans are essential. We consider that 27 plans are important for the full deployment of the Facility – including, of course, the two that we have not yet received, from Bulgaria and the Netherlands ,for reasons linked to the internal situation of these two countries. But I can assure you that we are in contact with the authorities of these two countries to understand and make possible the swift presentation of these plans when the political decision is taken. By the way, we can’t substitute the Commission in this political decision; that has to be taken by national governments, stable or caretaking or whatever. But not by the Commission. As you know, regarding the plans that were submitted and are pending, the assessment is underway. You know that the contacts are continuous. There is no way that there is a blackout in contacts with the authorities of these three countries, and in particular with the Polish and Hungarian authorities. We are continuing our dialogue with these authorities, and of course we consider the rule of law dimension to be very important. Again, here the rule of law dimension is pertinent and connected to our regulation for the RRF, because we also have our work streams as European institutions – the Parliament, the Commission – to deal with rule-of-law issues in all 27 Member States, but we have very precise and concrete commitments in the RRF regulation connected to the rule of law. In particular, the anchor of the RRF regulation relates to the country—specific recommendations, as you know, including for measures on the rule of law. So, while respecting the principle that the plans represent a reform agenda of the country – the principle of ownership that I recalled in my introductory remarks – we have insisted on reforms to address rule-of-law, country-specific recommendations. These country—specific recommendations connected to the rule of law are, in particular, those that have a bearing on the protection of the financial interests of the Union. These are not all the issues we have which are connected to the rule of law. We have – I repeat – several other parallel work streams to discuss this with all Member States. But for those that are connected to country—specific recommendations and so to the protection of the financial interests of the Union, the commitments on these issues are essential to reach our agreement on the RRF. I hope that this distinction is clear and doesn’t give room for any idea of the Commission using double standards, because we are assessing what is in the country—specific recommendations and we are doing this for all Member States, but without double standards and also without significant exceptions. Of course we have flexibility, but we can’t accept the idea that there are some country-specific recommendations that cannot be observed in the regulation and in our assessment. This is the state of play. I think that we are continuing to cooperate and to dialogue to reach an agreement, but to reach an agreement, we have to respect this regulation.