Brussels approves third tranche of Portugal’s RRP

The European Union has approved the third tranche of €1.8Bn of Portugal’s Recovery and Resilience ‘bazooka’.

All told, there are €1.7Bn in grants and €110 million in loans that Portugal will receive in the first quarter of 2023. The decision to release the cash was made on Friday. (16 Dec)
The Government had requested the release of the funds in September after a positive preliminary evaluation.
But agreement has to be rubber stamped by the other 27 Member-States, so the money will only arrive in the first quarter of 2023.
The RRP (Recovery and Resilience Plan) is the main instrument at the heart of NextGenerationEU.
Portugal delivered the payment requester the second tranche in September after meeting 18 marks and two targets.
The measures included the Banco Português do Fomento ( a development bank) successfully passing the Pillar Assessment (an evaluation which attests that the institution is capable to indirectly manage the European funds) or the transfer or adjudication of €250 million in government capital to the bank, or the adjudication of financial support contracts to development entities for the creation and widening of the social facilities network/social supports.
However, the lion’s share of the measures were of an essentially administrative nature: the coming into force of regulations regarding the hand-out of financial support packages by the Regional Health Administrations that will define the model of the programme’s governance and the respective requirements that have to be met by candidates.
In August last year, the European Commission delivered €2.2Bn of the RRP – 13% of the total of €13.9Bn grants and €2.7Bn in loans that it will receive by 2026 – in the form of an advance payment.
The second tranche of €1.6Bn was requested in January, approved in March and paid out in May. Portugal therefore took possession of 20.2% of the total RRP. Once Portugal receives the third tranche, Portugal would have got 31% of its ‘bazooka’.