Brussels hands over nearly 9.9 billion euros to Spain in fourth instalment of EU recovery and resilience plan funds

The European Commission handed over almost 9.9 billion euros in EU funding to Spain on Friday 26 July as the fourth payment of the recovery and resilience plan. There is an outstanding payment of 1.58 billion that remains frozen due to non-compliance with one of the objectives. However, Spain’s ministry of finance has said in a statement that the remaining amount “will be received in the coming months”.

Brussels has already confirmed in its assessment that Spain had satisfactorily met 60 of the 61 objectives, giving the green light to almost all of the fourth payment of 10 billion although, in parallel, it has activated the payment suspension procedure due to the fact that objective 201 of the plan, which refers to the investment programme for the digitalisation of small and medium-sized enterprises ‘Agents of Change’ due to a lack of demand, has not yet been “satisfactorily” met.

The Commission has acknowledged 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 six months to meet this target and access the outstanding payment of the plan or it could lose the 1.58 billion.

Digital transformation

Spain has met 60 objectives, including a total of 34 reforms and 26 investments. All of them have been developed in areas such as digital transformation and energy transition of the economy, pensions, research, development and innovation, education, water treatment, digitisation of public services, including justice, or inter-territorial cooperation.

The payment made on Friday is in addition to the 38 billion euros already received in the form of transfers, bringing the total to almost 48 billion euros, 60 per cent of its share of non-refundable transfers. In terms of objectives, Spain has met 181, or 36 per cent of those linked to transfers.

The ministry of finance highlights that Spain is the country that has received the most transfers from the EU, with a total of almost 48 billion euros.