Today’s Council of Ministers is expected to approve the addendum to the extension of the Recovery Plan, with which Spain will ask Brussels for an additional €94 billion from the Next Generation programme, including soft loans and non-refundable aid.
Initially, the European Union assigned Spain direct transfers of €69.5 billion from the Recovery Mechanism, to be unblocked through compliance with the investments and reforms agreed in the Plan, as well as the possibility of obtaining a further €70 billion in low-cost loans.
Finally, as the collapse of Spain’s GDP in 2020 (-11.3 per cent) is deeper than expected, Brussels has increased the amount of direct transfers to Spain by 7.7 billion, in addition to another 2.6 billion from the REPowerEU energy programme promoted after the war in Ukraine. In turn, there will be 84 billion in soft loans for Spain, which the government has said it will apply for in full. As a result, the country is now eligible to receive a further 94.3 billion in European loans, which require the submission of an addendum to the Recovery Plan, detailing its purpose.
The Government has been working against the clock in the last few hours to finalise a document that the European authorities will have two months to evaluate and that will mark the country’s economic agenda until 2026, regardless of the Government that emerges from the General Elections called for 23 July.
Calviño, who yesterday said that 27,000 million had been executed (70% of what was received from the EU), announced that the addendum will also include a 2,200 million tax incentive fund for green investments by families and companies.
