The recovery fund that financed the PNRR “is a tool based on results and not on costs, so the countries agreed on the plans for investments and reforms and the Commission assesses whether the objectives for payments have been achieved: the needs for payments may not be perfectly aligned with the flow of (actual) expenses, there is some room for liquidity management.” This is how the EU Commissioner for Economy Valdis Dombrovskis responded to a question about the statements of Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti regarding the fact that part of the financial coverage of the measure to abolish the car tax came “from unused PNRR,” or from “savings that could not be reallocated” as the deadline to do so had expired. The minister had clarified that “these are savings compared to projects that have been completed and on which savings remain, so these are national funds, not PNRR resources or European resources” and it is “a normal coverage, like all coverages on the national budget.”
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Payments may not be aligned with costs
The EU Commissioner explained that the Recovery and Resilience Facility funds “are based on performance, on results, and not on costs. This means that Member States agree on Recovery and Resilience Plans with a series of investments and reforms, while our role is to assess whether these investments and reforms have actually been implemented, so whether all milestones and objectives have been reached and, consequently, to disburse the payments. This can mean that the flow of payments may not be perfectly aligned with the flow of costs or spending in the Member State.”
Margins on liquidity management
“For this, I should get better informed,” emphasized Valdis Dombrovskis, “with the communications from Minister Giorgetti. But probably there can be margins on liquidity management, because it is a tool based on results, not on costs.”
On Russian assets, openness to different options
Dombrovskis then stressed how the EU Commission is ready to consider “different modalities” on the possible use of frozen Russian sovereign assets in the EU to facilitate an agreement among Member States, responding to a question on hypotheses that have returned to the center of debate, including placing the assets in a special European vehicle. “On the part of the EU Commission, we have been very clear. We presented a concrete legislative proposal already last year and now we are ready to support these discussions, also considering different modalities and facilitating the possibility of reaching decisions.”
“The frozen Russian assets were not part of our discussions during the Ecofin meeting,” Dombrovskis clarified. “In general terms, first of all, we know that, regarding the support loan we granted to Ukraine, Ukraine is obliged to repay this loan only if and when Russia pays reparations, which obviously leads to the question: what happens if Russia does not pay reparations? And, in this case, in the regulation on support to Ukraine, we have explicitly reserved the right of the Union to use those Russian sovereign assets. So I would say that very likely we will have to return to these discussions anyway,” explained the commissioner. “Meanwhile, indeed, several EU Member States and also quite a number of Members of the European Parliament have, in a way, restarted this discussion.”
