The European Commission gave a positive preliminary assessment on Thursday of Croatia’s request for €700 million in grants under the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF), the second instalment for the country.
“I have good news for Croatia. Croatia has made sufficient progress on its recovery and resilience plan to receive a second payment under NextGenerationEU,” Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in a statement. Zagreb received the first instalment of €700 million in June and submitted a payment request for the second on 19 September, providing detailed evidence of having met 25 targets and milestones set out in an EU Council decision, a document that details Croatia’s planned reforms and investments on almost 300 pages. The RRF is a temporary tool primarily aimed at helping the EU achieve its climate neutrality target by 2050. Croatia’s RRF is to be supported by €5.5 billion in grants, of which €818 million was already disbursed in pre-financing in September last year.
The Commission’s assessment will now be forwarded to the Economic and Financial Committee, an EU advisory body comprising government and central bank officials from the 27 EU countries.” Following the EFC’s opinion, the Commission will adopt the final decision on the disbursement of the financial contribution,” it said in a statement.
(Zoran Radosavljević | EURACTIV.com)
Source: euractiv.com
