ANALYSIS Who are the champions at attractig most funds from the Recovery and Reselience Plan and where does Romania rank?

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Spain and France have already attracted billions of euros after meeting dozens of milestones in their own national recovery and resilience plans. By contrast, Romania will send its first payment request only in May, as the government has „ticked off” milestones in a hurry just hours before deadlines. And the money attracted so far from pre-financing is sitting idle, as our country has only recently put all the processes in place to spend these EU funds.

Economedia has analysed the state of play of national recovery and resilience plans in each of the Member States that have developed such a plan and assessed where Romania stands in terms of implementation compared to others.

Status of the NRRP in each country
The NRRP provides total funding of €338 billion in grants and €385.8 billion in loans. So far €54.04 billion in grants and €19.91 billion in loans have been disbursed, much of which is pre-financing.

• To „tick” a milestone as met, a country must send a payment request for it (which normally includes several milestones met from the country’s point of view), and the European Commission must assess it positively. So even though many countries, including Romania, have already announced that dozens of milestones have been met, they are not officially taken into account until they have received the green light from the European Commission. If the EU executive finds that a country has applied for payment on a milestone that has been ticked as met but has not been met satisfactorily, the country has six months to „fix” it, or else it has to pay the money back.

Only 2% of the total milestones have been reached so far, all by Spain (from 27 December 2021) and France (from 7 March 2022). For these, Spain has received a pre-financing of €9 billion and a first payment of €10 billion. France received pre-financing of €5.1 billion and a first payment of €7.4 billion.

Other countries such as Croatia, Greece, Italy and Portugal have sent their first payment request and are waiting for the European Commission’s assessment.

Romania has not yet sent its first payment request, a situation we detail below.

Here is the state of play of the NRRP at European level, broken down by country:

Austria

• Allocation: €3.5 billion
• Planned milestones: 106 investments, 65 reforms
• Completed: 0 milestones
• Received pre-financing of €450 million

Belgium

• Allocation: €5.92 billion (1.24% of GDP)
• Milestones planned: 163 investments, 47 reforms
• Completed: 0 milestones
• Received pre-financing of €770 million

Bulgaria

• Allocation: €6.27 billion (10.23% of GDP)
• Sent the plan to the Commission on 15 October 2021 and not yet approved

Croatia

• Allocation: €6.3 billion (11.61% of GDP)
• Planned milestones: 224 investments, 148 reforms
• Implemented: 0 milestones
• Received pre-financing of €818 million
• Sent a payment request of €700 million

Cyprus

• Allocation: €1.21 billion (5.41% of GDP)
• Planned milestones: 163 investments, 108 reforms
• Completed: 0 milestones
• Received pre-financing of €157 million

Czech Republic

• Allocation: €7.04 billion (3.12% of GDP)
• Milestones planned: 168 investments, 76 reforms
• Completed: 0 milestones
• Received pre-financing of €915 million

Denmark

• Allocation: €1.55 billion (0.50% of GDP)
• Milestones planned: 61 investments, 16 reforms
• Completed: 0 milestones
• Received pre-financing of €201 million

Estonia

• Allocation: €0.97 billion (3.45% of GDP)
• Milestones planned: 75 investments, 49 reforms
• Implemented: 0 milestones
• Received pre-financing of €126 million

Finland

• Allocation: €2.09 billion, 0.87% of GDP
• Milestones planned: 100 investments, 40 reforms
• Realised: 0 milestones
• Received pre-financing of €271 million

France

• Allocation: €39.37 billion (1.62% of GDP)
• Milestones planned: 134 investments, 41 reforms
• Realised: 22%, 21 investments, 17 reforms
• Received pre-financing of €5.1 billion
• The Commission made a first payment of €7.4 billion on 4 March

Germany

• Allocation: €25.61 billion (0.74% of GDP)
• Planned milestones: 82 investments, 47 reforms
• Completed: 0 milestones
• Received pre-financing of €2.25 billion

Greece

• Allocation: €30.50 billion (16.63% of GDP)
• Milestones planned: 207 investments, 124 reforms
• Implemented: 0 milestones
• Received pre-financing of €4 billion
• Made a payment request of €3.6 billion

Hungary

• Allocation: €7.17 billion (4.91% of GDP)
• Sent the plan to the Commission on 12 May 2021 and has not yet been approved

Ireland

• Allocation: €0.99 billion (0.28% of GDP)
• Planned milestones: 73 investments, 36 reforms
• Implemented: 0 milestones
• The European Commission approved the plan on 16 July 2021

Italy

• Allocation: €191.48 billion (10.67% of GDP)
• Milestones planned: 377 investments, 150 reforms
• Achieved: 0 milestones
• Received pre-financing of €24.9 billion
• Sent a payment request of €21 billion

Latvia

• Allocation: €1.83 billion (6% of GDP)
• Milestones planned: 153 investments, 61 reforms
• Completed: 0 milestones
• Received pre-financing of €237 million

Lithuania

• Allocation: €2.22 billion (4.56% of GDP)
• Milestones planned: 26 investments, 165 reforms
• Completed: 0 milestones
• Received pre-financing of €289 million

Luxembourg

• Allocation: €0.09 billion (0.15% of GDP)
• Milestones planned: 36 investments, 27 reforms
• Realised: 0 milestones
• Received pre-financing of €12.1 million

Malta

• Allocation: €0.32 billion (2.25% of GDP)
• Milestones planned: 49 investments, 89 reforms
• Completed: 0 milestones
• Received pre-financing of €41.1 million

The Netherlands

• Allocation: €5.95 billion (0.73% of GDP)
• Have not yet sent the recovery plan

Poland

• Allocation: €35.52 billion (6.66% of GDP)
• Sent the plan to the Commission on 3 May 2021 and not yet approved

Portugal

• Allocation: €16.61 billion (7.75% of GDP)
• Milestones planned: 284 investments, 57 reforms
• Implemented: 0 milestones
• Received pre-financing of €2.2 billion
• Sent a payment request of €1.16 billion

Romania

• Allocation: €29.18 billion (13.09% of GDP)
• Planned milestones: 292 investments, 215 reforms
• Completed: 0 milestones
• Received pre-financing of €3.7 billion

Slovakia

• Allocation: €6.33 billion (6.74% of GDP)
• Milestones planned: 110 investments, 86 reforms
• Implemented: 0 milestones
• Received pre-financing of €822.7 million

Slovenia

• Allocation: €2.48 billion (5.13% of GDP)
• Milestones planned: 140 investments, 69 reforms
• Realised: 0 milestones
• Received pre-financing of €231 million

Spain

• Allocation: €69.51 billion (5.59% of GDP)
• Milestones planned: 247 investments, 169 reforms
• Realised: 13%, 3 investments, 49 reforms
• Received pre-financing of €9 billion
• Received a first payment of €10 billion

Sweden

• Allocation: €3.29 billion (0.69% of GDP)
• European Commission approved the plan on 29 March 2022

Romania’s situation
So far, Romania has received only €3.6 billion through the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP) as pre-financing from both the grant and loan components. This money is only now starting to be spent.

Romania will send two payment requests this year: one covering milestones reached by 31 December 2021 and one covering milestones reached by 31 March 2022. This year we should attract €6 billion from the NRRP, said recently the Minister for European Investment and Projects Dan Vîlceanu.

„Romania has chosen to have two payment requests per year, which means that each payment request is linked to an instalment corresponding to a set of milestones and targets to be achieved in the two preceding quarters. The first payment request includes milestones and targets that were due by Q4 2021, as it corresponds to all milestones and targets that Romania committed to implement for the first payment request from the start of the NPRR eligibility period in February 2021. The assessment of milestones and targets related to this first payment request has not started. The Commission and Romania are in the process of finalising the signature of the operational arrangements, after which Romania can submit its payment request and the Commission can start the assessment,” a European Commission spokesperson told Economedia.

The first payment application has not yet been submitted by Romania, according to the Commissioner. Therefore, the Commission has not yet started to assess the satisfactory fulfilment of any of the milestones and objectives.

„Once the payment requests are approved, the Recovery and Resilience Scoreboard (the performance reporting system of the Recovery and Resilience Facility) will display the milestones and targets that have been assessed by the Commission as having been satisfactorily met,” the spokesperson added.

The European Investment Minister said that Romania’s first payment request could be submitted in May, with sources saying that the second would be submitted in October.

First payment request
For the first payment request, Romania had to meet 21 milestones and targets: 14 milestones and targets are financed by grants and 7 milestones and targets are financed by loans.

The government claims to have met all these milestones on time, i.e. by 31 December 2021. But the MonitorPNRR platform shows that one milestone on government cloud is late. This is milestone „142 – C7 – R1 – The task force for the implementation and monitoring of digital transformation reforms and investments is established and operational”. The Monitor NRRP platform shows that this milestone in practice provided for the operationalisation of a team (Task Force) to prepare an analysis on options for the development of the Government Cloud. Achievement of the milestone involved operationalising this team. As of 31 December 2021, there was only the Government Decision establishing it.