Today, 16 June, the EU Commission approved Portugal’s recovery and resilience plan worth around 16 billion euros. This evening, Spain’s plan will follow, and the Danish and Greek plans are also close to approval. Crucially, the national recovery plans need to meet the landmark targets of at least 37% spending on the Green Deal and 20% on digitisation. Sustainable structural reforms in line with the country-specific recommendations are also a key assessment criterion.
MEP Sven Giegold, financial and economic policy spokesperson of the Greens/EFA group commented:
“In principle, the European recovery fund is a great success. Now it is a matter of implementation whether the fund’s potential for the green transformation of the European economy is fully exploited. In the case of Portugal, for a significant part of the measures it is not yet foreseeable whether they will have a positive or negative climate impact. Important details on the implementation of some of the measures planned are still missing. Whether the construction of new housing will contribute to the achievement of the European climate targets will depend decisively on the building materials used and the energy efficiency of the planned buildings. It is important that the Commission continuously accompanies the implementation of national plans and verifies their compliance with the green spending objective and the do no significant harm principle. The European recovery fund must not fall victim to greenwashing. We call on the Commission to make the negotiations with the Member States transparent. The European Parliament and civil society must be involved as provided for in the EU regulation.
The German Government presented a “copy & paste” plan of the German economic recovery programme in Brussels and was rightly criticised for it by the EU Commission. Germany is using EU funds to plug budget holes. The country-specific recommendations of the EU are largely ignored. In this way, the German Government is setting a bad example in Europe. The Next Generation EU Programme will significantly shape European economies going forward. Therefore, all EU Member States must be held to a high standard to ensure that these funds are put to the best possible use.”
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