Eduardo González
The Ministers of Economy and Finance of the 27 EU States yesterday gave the green light to the update of Spain’s Recovery Plan, two weeks after the European Commission gave it its positive assessment. With this decision, Spain will be able to immediately mobilize more than 93,000 million euros, which will be added to the 37,000 million that our country has already received from European funds.
The Economic and Financial Affairs Council, meeting in Luxembourg and attended by the first vice president and acting Minister of Economy, Nadia Calviño, authorized the modified national recovery and resilience plans of the Czech Republic, Spain, the Netherlands, Portugal and Slovenia, which They include, from now on, a new REPowerEU chapter, which “will contribute to accelerating the transition of countries towards clean energy, diversifying their energy supplies and improving their energy efficiency,” according to the Council.
On June 6, Spain presented a modified national plan that included a REPowerEU chapter and increased digital ambition and the social dimension. Since then, the Government was waiting for the resolution to request the 10,000 million euros of the fourth tranche of the Next Generation European funds and to access the second phase of the European Recovery Plan and opt for the 83,000 million euros in loans. that correspond to the aforementioned mechanism.
The modified plan focuses especially on the ecological transition and allocates 40% of available funds to measures supporting climate goals. Specifically, Spain’s REPowerEU chapter consists of a new reform, an expanded investment based on three existing measures and seven new investments to meet the objectives of the REPowerEU Plan “to make Europe independent of Russian fossil fuels well before 2030”. These measures focus on diversifying energy sources to become less dependent on fossil fuels, especially by speeding up the implementation of renewable energy, renewable hydrogen, the decarbonization of the industry and investment in the value chain to the net zero emissions industry.
With the decision from Brussels and the approval of the Council, the Spanish recovery plan now amounts to 163 billion euros (83 billion euros in loans and 80 billion euros in subsidies) and covers 111 reforms and 142 investments.
