The Diplomat
Yesterday, the European Commission disbursed 9.9 billion euros to Spain in subsidies from the fourth payment of the recovery and resilience plan, which represents almost the entire tranche.
However, the European Commission has frozen 158 million euros for failure to comply with one of the milestones.
Brussels already confirmed in its evaluation that Spain had satisfactorily met 60 of the 61 milestones, thus giving the green light to practically the entire fourth payment of 10 billion euros.
In parallel, the Commission has activated the payment suspension procedure because objective 201 of the plan, which refers to the investment program in the digitalization of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) ‘Agents of Change’, has not yet been “satisfactorily” met due to a lack of demand.
The Commission recognises the first steps taken by the Spanish authorities in relation to the pending objective, as the ‘Kit Consulting’ programme has been launched to replace the failed one, although it warns that “work remains to be done”.
The Government now has a period of six months to fulfil this objective and access the full financing of the fourth tranche of the plan or, otherwise, it could lose the 158 million affected.
