The Prime Minister announced today, before the President of the Republic, that the European Commission has already given the “green light” to the third and fourth payments to Portugal under the Recovery and Resilience Plan (RRP), totaling 2.4 billion euros.
António Costa said this during the ceremony to present Christmas greetings to the President of the Republic, at the Palace of Belém, after recalling in his speech the challenge that Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa had made to his government on this matter, practically since mid-2022.
With the Minister for the Presidency, Mariana Vieira da Silva, who holds the PRR portfolio, at his side, the leader of the executive recalled the central message that the President of the Republic gave in his New Year’s speech, saying that 2023 “would be a decisive year for the implementation of European funds and, in particular, the PRR”.
“I said it was a difficult year and that we couldn’t be under the illusion that we’d have 2024, 2025 and 2026 to carry it out. This was not an easy year, because there were a lot of requests,” he began.
However, according to the Prime Minister, “the truth” is that the government “managed to arrive at the Belém Palace today with good news”.
“The European Commission has just today approved the transfer to Portugal, as early as next week, of an amount corresponding to the bulk of the third and fourth payments of the RRP. That’s 2.4 billion euros,” he said.
According to António Costa’s figures, in the European Union, “there is only one other country that will receive the fourth payment”, like Portugal.
“There is a part that remains, around 700 million euros, but that will be paid in the first few months of the year,” he said afterwards.