The European Commission said Tuesday
that it has given a preliminary positive assessment of Italy's
request for the payment of the fifth instalment of its National
Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), which is worth 11 billion
euros.
The assessment regards 53 milestones and targets linked to the
NRRP, a huge programme that seeks to make the Italian economy
Greener and more modern with the help of around 194 billion
euros in grants and low-interest loans from the EU.
Payment of the funding is dependent on the achievement of
milestones regarding reforms and the projects themselves.
Premier Giorgia Meloni's government had to significantly modify
its post-COVID NRRP to update it to the needs of changing
circumstances and avert the danger of funding not arriving
because it was not possible to complete the projects by the
deadline of 2026.
The fifth payment request covers steps in the delivery of 14
reforms and 22 investments in areas including competition law,
public procurement, waste and water management, justice, the
spending review framework, and secondary and tertiary education.
The Commission has sent its positive preliminary assessment to
the Economic and Financial Committee, which now has four weeks
to deliver its opinion and pave the way for payment that will
take the total allocated so far up to 113.5 billion.
Italy recently became the first EU country to request its sixth
tranche of funding for its NRRP from the NextGenerationEU
programme.
The Italian NRRP comprises 66 reforms and 150 investments,
reflected in 618 milestones and targets.
It amounts to 194.4 billion euros - 71.8 billion in grants and
122.6 billion in loans.
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