Slovenia has received the first funding from the EU’s Recovery and Resilience Facility for €50 million after months of delays that earned the government harsh criticism as the funding was meant to go through last autumn.
The European Commission confirmed the transfer on Thursday after Slovenia fulfilled the required milestones covering reforms promoting digital transformation, improving the business environment, and the audit and control system.
“Other milestones concern investments in low-power processors and semiconductor chips as well as in European common data infrastructure and services,” the Commission said.
Slovenia expects €1.5 billion in grants and up to €3.2 billion in loans. Almost two years after its National Recovery and Resilience Plan was confirmed, it received only €281 million in the €50 million payment and €231 million in pre-financing it received in September 2021.
There were various delays as the new government embarked on updating the national plan after it became clear that the country would be entitled to fewer grants due to higher GDP growth than expected.
In part, the update is needed due to the inclusion of efforts to reduce the bloc’s energy dependence on Russia and due to new eligibility calculations based on higher-than-expected GDP growth in 2020 and 2021.
The government also claims the previous right-wing government put too many fairly small projects in the national plan, most notoriously distributing funds for flood protection measures that have been given to some municipalities where there is little risk of flooding.
Now in opposition, the parties of the former government said the current one is not doing enough to prevent Slovenia from losing valuable funds. “The government is not tackling this with a sufficient degree of care and responsibility, and it is responding to problems too slowly,” the Democrats, who are the main opposition, have said.
(Sebastijan R. Maček | sta.si)
Source: euractiv.com
