It is a pleasure to be back in this House after the elections. I see many familiar faces here but also many new ones, so we are looking for good cooperation.
Much has happened since we last met in April to discuss the Recovery and Resilience Facility. But before embarking on the latest developments, I would like to take stock of the past few years of excellent cooperation with the European Parliament on implementing the RRF.
When NextGenerationEU and the RRF were proposed four years ago, we were bold and ambitious.
The support of the European Parliament has been crucial all the way.
As a result, the EU has managed a high degree of economic and social resilience in the face of two unprecedented shocks: the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia's war against Ukraine.
With little more than two years until the Facility ends in 2026, it will now be for us to finish what we started in 2021.
The end-date of the Facility will fall in the middle of this new legislative term. This will be a landmark moment. Here, we share a common vision: to make the RRF a success by helping Member States to deliver on their reforms and investments.
I am confident that we can make it a reality. But we still have a lot of work ahead, and we should continue to undertake it together. Let us now take stock of where we stand.
The flow of payment requests accelerated in the last months of 2023, signalling a renewed focus on implementation.
To date, the Commission has disbursed over €265 billion to Member States. This represents 41% of the total amount of €650 billion in grants and loans committed under the RRF.
Since the RRF was launched, the Commission has received 67 payment requests. So far, 15 Member States have opted for a pace of two requests per year while 10 prefer to submit just one. For different reasons, Hungary and Sweden are yet to submit their first requests.
At present, our services are busy assessing 16 payment requests amounting to close to €45 billion..
While there are no binding deadlines for submitting payment requests, the Commission invites Member States to follow more closely the indicative timeline set out in the revised Operational Arrangements.
This is important to prevent an accumulation of requests towards the end of the Facility's lifetime and to avert the risk of operational constraints. Looking at the last quarter of this year, we expect an additional 10 payment requests. This should bring the total number submitted in 2024 to 23.
As Member States continue to press ahead with carrying out their reform and investment agendas, we can expect the pace of implementation to substantially increase over the last two years.
The Commission hopes to bring total disbursements under the Facility to around €300 billion by the end of this year, and this is close to 50% of the RRF envelope.
To achieve this, it will be vital for Member States to continue their commitment and close cooperation with the Commission.
In July, the Commission updated its guidance with several simplifications and clarifications to streamline the implementation of the RRF:
- more clarity on how to amend an RRP, to cater for better alternatives to implement a measure in a way that reduces the administrative burden;
- more clarity on scope for amendments that can be made to an RRP when objective circumstances render a measure no longer achievable;
- lowering the administrative burden linked with the review of operational arrangements following the amendment of the RRP;
- reducing the information requested from a Member State in the context of their bi-annual reporting.
Honourable Members
In February 2021, we achieved something great together. We created an instrument that allowed all 27 Member States to commit almost € 600 billion in reforms and investments for a period of six years.
The objective of the Facility was clear and two-fold:
- help Member States recover from the pandemic,
- and make our economies and societies fit for the future.
Our efforts have therefore been directed to tackling the great challenges of our time: sustainable and inclusive growth, the green and digital transitions, competitiveness and open strategic autonomy, and investing in our human capital to address labour and skills shortages.
By implementing together what Member States cannot do on their own, we are creating tangible European value added. By combining reforms and investments in a coherent and structured way, we are ensuring that our funds are spent in strategically and sustainably.
As a performance-based instrument, the Facility provides direct financial support to Member States, conditional upon agreed reforms and investments. Member States can only unlock RRF disbursements by achieving specific targets and milestones that measure the progress of implementation.
Despite challenges such as inflation, weak external demand and monetary tightening, projections indicate a sustained increase in investment across the EU. This is largely achieved thanks to the RRF's influence.
The Facility is also playing an important role in tackling reform needs in the Member States, thanks to its close link with the European Semester. Member States had to address a significant subset of country-specific recommendations in their national plans to gain their approval.
Growth-enhancing reforms in areas such as the business environment, planning and permitting, and public procurement, are expected to boost investments – and bring a positive cross-border impact across the EU.
Paolo will provide you shortly with specific examples of the reforms and investments recently achieved or underway.
In addition, we have also assisted Member States in combining reforms and investments to create synergies with other EU funds, notably cohesion policy. This will generate a lasting impact across the EU beyond 2026.
While the implementation of the Facility is firmly underway, we should not underestimate the amount of work that lies ahead of us.
The recent accumulation of crises affected the pace of implementation of national plans. There were several reasons for this: the need to divert administrative capacity and re-programme certain priorities, as well as the impact of supply distortions, among others.
Still, despite these difficulties, implementation on the ground continued to move forward at a reasonable pace and, thanks to the efforts of Member States, we are now catching up with this delay.
We should continue to build on this progress to overcome the challenges ahead. There are significant reforms that remain to be adopted, and there are still implementation hurdles for investments that lie ahead.
Thank you very much and with this, I pass over to Paolo.
