Recovery Plan, the presentation of the recovery plan to the European Commission could be postponed. The European Commissioner for Economy, Paolo Gentiloni, said in Brussels, at the end of the Eurogroup meeting, that the EU executive expects the presentation of “most” of the national plans “within 2-3-4 weeks”.
Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis confirmed that some countries will probably need “an extra week or two“So the plans will arrive by mid-May, and not all by April 30 as per the Recovery and Resilience Facility regulation.
The end-of-month deadline is not mandatory (“as a rule”, as a rule, says the regulation), but Italy, which is still the first beneficiary of the plan, may need a little more time. Definitely not alone. Nothing dramatic, only that the times for receiving the first funds are likely to lengthen.
This shouldn’t be an insurmountable problem either, however, given that government bond yields have fallen significantly and that no country, let alone Italy, has liquidity problems. In any case, Dombrovskis pointed out, better to do things right than rush to present a flawed plan: “It is more important to take a week or two to improve the quality of the plan, rather than focusing on a date,” he said. .
The Commission, explained Gentiloni, aims to approve some national plans “before the summer break”, which should entail, for those who have presented the plans first, the provision of pre-financing, to the extent of 13% of the total, before the others . The countries that are further ahead are France, Greece, Portugal and Spain. Spain which overtook Italy, albeit slightly, for transfers in absolute numbers, because in Italy the economy went less worse than expected in 2020 (our country, however, remains by far the first for the sum of transfers and loans).
Gentiloni, who did not answer directly to the question whether or not Italy is expected to meet the deadline of 30 April (if necessary, it is up to Rome to communicate this, not the Commission), however recalled that the change of government caused a “pause” in the work on the Recovery Planbut now, he added, the executive is working “at full speed” and “I am confident that we will have a good plan”. In order for the Commission to be able to approve the first national plans before August, the decision on own resources, the legal act that creates the necessary guarantee for the issuance of the bonds by the Commission, technically l ‘headroom, the difference between commitments and payments in the 2021-27 MFF.
So far, 17 out of 27 countries have ratified it. There are 10 missing, including Germany, where the Constitutional Court must rule, which has ordered the President of the Republic not to sign the ratification law, because first he must examine an appeal, deemed not manifestly unfounded, presented by an association headed by Bernd Lucke, one of the founders of Alternative fuer Deutschland, who later left the party.
A senior EU official said he was “confident that we will solve these problems before the end of the Portuguese presidency”. If all ten remaining countries proceed with ratification in time, then another stumbling block will have been overcome. Meanwhile, the national plans must be evaluated by the Commission, which has two months of time (“in theory”, Gentiloni specified), after which the Council has another month to approve it. Once the plan has been approved by the Council, the Commission can then proceed with the disbursement of the pre-financing (13% of the amount due), provided that the decision on own resources has been ratified in the meantime. On balance, unless accelerated, it now appears more difficult for Italy to be able to receive pre-financing before the summer break.