MadridThe Spanish government has formally requested the third payment of the European Next Generation EU funds, which involves the disbursement of a total of 6,000 million more euros, as reported this Saturday by the Ministry of Economy and Finance in a statement. The amount of this second payment corresponds to the fulfillment of 23 milestones and six objectives during the first semester of 2022.
These 6,000 million euros would be added to the 31,036 million already received, of which 9,036 million were received as pre-financing and 22,000 million euros corresponded to the first and second disbursements. Spain becomes the first EU member state to request the third payment.
The ministry has explained that this request for payments continues the “intense” reform process that has already begun. Thus, he highlighted the entry into force of the bankruptcy law reform, which establishes a second chance procedure and introduces a special procedure aimed at micro-SMEs that reduces its duration and cost and will be processed entirely by electronic means. In the educational field, one of the milestones is the entry into force of the law relating to the comprehensive system of professional training; this law seeks to regulate a regime of professional training and support capable of responding flexibly to the interests and aspirations of professional qualifications of people throughout their lives and to the skills demanded by new productive and sectoral needs.
With regard to pensions and Social Security, the Spanish executive has highlighted that very important progress has been made, such as the reform of the Social Security contribution system for self-employed workers to gradually implement a new contribution system based in real income.
After the request is made, the European Commission has a period of two months to analyze and check the documentation presented by the Spanish government before making the disbursement, according to article 24 of the regulation of the Recovery and Resilience Mechanism .
In the event of obtaining a positive assessment by the European Commission, Spain would have already met 121 milestones and objectives out of a total of 416, which would be equivalent to almost 30% of the total milestones and objectives, according to the ministry’s statement .