European Commission approves € 6.3 billion for Croatia and € 1.2 billion for Cyprus under the Recovery and Resilience Facility
The European Commission has approved the Recovery and Resilience Plan of Croatia and Cyprus, approving funds in tune of € 6.3 billion and € 1.2 billion respectively.
Croatia will devote 40% of funds to promote the uptake of renewable energy, energy efficiency and post-earthquake reconstruction of buildings and sustainable mobility. The plan will also cover climate change adaptation measures like improved management of water resources and flood protection measures. Croatia will also enhance the rich biodiversity through the restoration of rivers, floodplains and lakes. It will invest € 789 million all these activities.
For digital transformation, Croatia will devote 20% of total expenditure to support gigabit connectivity, digitalisation of public administration, transport, the judicial system and higher education. It will also focus on increasing the national broadband coverage to help businesses.
Taking it to twitter, the President of European Commission – Ursula von der Leyen tweeted,
🇭🇷 Green light to Croatia's recovery plan!
— Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) July 8, 2021
With €6.3 billion, Croatia will be the largest recipient of #NextGenerationEU relative to the size of its economy.
Croatia's recovery plan will help build a greener, more digital future for all Croatian citizens.
Croatia will invest to update school curricula, increase access to early childhood education and care, and implement single-shift, full-day teaching. New active labour market policies will support green and digital skills and jobs for the most vulnerable groups. Croatia also wants to improve the public administration and the business environment. Croatia will also focus on reducing corruption and digitising the legal system.
The European Council would disburse € 818 million to Croatia pre-financing. This represents 13% of the total amount allocated to Croatia.
The other plan which the European Commission approved is of Cyprus, allowing them a total of € 1.2 billion in grants and loans.
Cyprus will devote 41% of the total funds to support climate objectives such as introduction of green taxation, liberalisation of the electricity market, facilitating energy renovations in buildings and accelerating electric mobility. It will also make renewable energy in enterprises, municipalities and the wider public sector and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGO’). Cyprus will also undertake mass roll-out of smart meters as well as the EuroAsia Interconnector project.
On the digital front, it will devote 23% of the funds for investments in connectivity through a series of measures for ensuring coverage with very high-capacity broadband. It will also promote digital education and skills by enhancing digital infrastructure and curricula in schools, training teachers, and investing in digital skills training programmes. It also contains projects expected to promote the Digitalisation of public services and the digital transformation of the courts system is also on the cards.
Announcing the disbursal, Ursula tweeted,
🇨🇾 Delighted to approve Cyprus’ recovery plan!
— Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) July 8, 2021
It will make a real contribution to Cyprus’ green and digital transitions.
Significant funding will help fight climate change and protect against forest fires. #NextGenerationEU is powering Cyprus’ future.
Cyprus will also work to strengthen the public employment services with a special focus on youth employment. It will support early childhood education and care by extending free compulsory pre-primary education from the age of 4 years. It will also spend to strengthen the capacity, quality and resilience of the health and civil protection.
Besides, it will also establish a National Promotional Agency and the introduce funding programmes and schemes to improve access to finance and liquidity, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises. Setting-up of a central knowledge transfer office and grant schemes for research and innovation will also be made. It also aims to reduce the risks in the banking sector related to the legacy non-performing loans.
The European Council would disburse € 157 million to Cyprus in pre-financing. This represents 13% of the total amount allocated to Cyprus.
The E.U. had announced a € 672.5 billion Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) in 2020 to help European economies cope-up with the fight the economic crisis caused by Coronavirus (COVID-19). Of this, € 312.5 billion will be given as grants and € 360 billion in loans. All the 27 Member States are required to submit a recovery and resilience plan to get their share of funds.
