The Minister of Economy and Territorial Cohesion, Manuel Castro Almeida, announced today that calls for the €315 million reprogramming of the PRR to support business innovation will be launched next week.
“The first three calls for this instrument will be launched next week with the publication of notices for the application of the first €300 million,” stated the minister.
This instrument aims to support the implementation of technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI) by companies, as well as the defense and security industry.
“The reindustrialized support line will have €150 million available, the artificial intelligence line for SMEs will have €100 million, and the defense and security economy line will have €50 million,” said the minister at a conference organized by Jornal Económico celebrating its ninth anniversary under the theme ‘The Nine Keys of the European Union’.
This instrument is a reprogramming of the recovery and resilience plan (PRR) that had already been sent to Brussels and consists of allocating PRR funds that remain unused.
“This instrument will receive all leftover funds from other programs financed with PRR grants, which are applied in innovative investments for companies,” stated the minister, adding that in this way, by 2026, “the issue of executing the PRR grants is resolved.”
The first revision of the PRR was approved by the European Commission on April 11 of this year, aiming to reprogram projects that Portugal considered more difficult to execute.
Overall, the Portuguese PRR includes €22.2 billion in European funds, of which €16.3 billion are granted in subsidies and €5.9 billion come through loans from the Recovery and Resilience Mechanism.
With the reprogramming, the number of investments increases from 117 to 119, while the number of supported reforms remains at 44.
