Spain submits a petition to revise the recovery and resilience plan and include a REPowerEU chapter

On June 6, Spain submitted a request to the Commission to amend its recovery and resilience plan, to which it wishes to add a REPowerEU chapter.

The general amendments proposed by Spain would add 18 reforms and 25 new or expanded investments, and would involve more than €95 billion of additional RRM funding.

The proposed reforms include measures to strengthen the entrepreneurial environment and attract skilled workers, address the sustainability of the agricultural sector, promote the circular economy and combat desertification, strengthen digital security governance, promote housing supply, streamline permitting procedures for renewable energy projects, and reform the regulated retail electricity pricing mechanism.

The proposed investments cover €66 billion of new financial instruments to promote investments in the economy, in particular to support the competitiveness of SMEs and the green and digital transitions. A further €28 billion will be used to further support strategic industrial projects (so-called “PERTE”) already described in the original plan, of which €8 billion will be used to meet the REPowerEU targets.

European Commission publishes June infringement proceedings package for Spain

The proposed modification of Spain’s plan is based on the government’s request to benefit from the €84 billion in available loans. A transformational chapter of REPowerEU is also included, covering both reforms and investments, in order to further reduce the country’s dependence on Russian fossil fuels. This amounts to more than €8 billion, covering more than €5 billion in additional REPowerEU grants, almost €3 billion in loans from the existing allocation and a transfer of €58 million from Spain’s share of the Brexit Adaptation Reserve. The proposed modifications to the measures in the original plan take into account the effects of supply chain disruptions and the very high inflation experienced in 2022, and also the upward revision of Spain’s MRR grant allocation from €69.6 billion to €77.2 billion, an increase of around €7.6 billion. This revision was part of the June 2022 update of the MRR grant allocation key.

All these changes bring the value of the submitted amended plan to around €164 billion.

The Commission will now consider the modifications submitted by Spain and assess whether the modified plan still meets the assessment criteria of the MRR Regulation. If the Commission’s assessment is positive, the Commission will present a proposal for a Council Implementing Decision, modified to reflect the changes to the Spanish plan. Member States will then have up to four weeks to approve the Commission’s assessment.

More information: European Commission