The Diplomat
The First Vice President and Minister of Economy of the Spanish Government, Nadia Calviño, assured yesterday in London that Spain could receive “this week” a third payment of 6,000 million euros, in the form of non-refundable grants, from the EU’s Recovery and Resilience Mechanism.
During a press conference at the Spanish Embassy in the United Kingdom after holding several meetings with investors, Calviño assured that the Government had “formally” requested this week to the European Commission the 84 billion euros in loans that have been allocated to Spain in the framework of the European Next Generation EU funds.
Likewise, she added, “in these days we expect other positive and important news, such as the third payment of European funds of 6,000 million, which we expect to receive this week”. Under the recovery and resilience plan of Pedro Sánchez’s government, which develops the European plan and covers very broad investment and reform measures divided into thirty thematic sections, Spain expects to receive from the EU a total of 69.5 billion euros in non-refundable grants over a six-year period, an amount that represents half of the 140 billion allocated to Spain in the Next Generation EU recovery plan as a whole (the remaining half is in the form of loans). The grants will be released every six months and will oblige Spain to meet more than 400 targets.
On August 17, 2021, Spain received 13% (9 billion) of this 69.5 billion in pre-financing, to which was added a first payment of 10 billion euros disbursed on December 27. A second payment of EUR 12 billion was made on July 29, 2022. If this third payment is confirmed, the amount paid to date to our country under the Next Generation EU plan would rise to 43 billion euros.
Calviño held yesterday in London “an intense agenda of meetings with notation agencies, investors and companies in the technological field in a day with a lot of positive news”, as she informed during the press conference. These meetings, she assured, had “a very positive and constructive atmosphere”, because “international investors value very positively the evolution of the Spanish economy, which has even surprised favorably or exceeded the expectations of most analysts in the last two years”.
According to the Vice-President, “the Spanish economy is showing remarkable strength and resilience in such a complex international context” and investors “understand and support” the Government’s economic policy” and showed her “strong confidence in the country” and in the Spanish financial sector despite the recent turbulence.
“It has been a particularly favorable day to hold these meetings, in which inflation has fallen in Spain by more than two and a half points, placing it very close to 3%, and we have also published the fiscal balances for the end of 2002, which show a drop in the deficit to GDP ratio that is even more intense than what we had as a target,” she added. “Economic activity is even accelerating in this first quarter of 2023, all agencies expect the Spanish economy to have positive growth this year, well above the European Union. Moreover, investors know that our government is strongly committed to fiscal responsibility,” she continued.
