The Prime Minister-designate, Luís Montenegro, today assured the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, of speed in the implementation of the Recovery and Resilience Plan (RRP) to “recover delays”, expecting a new tranche to the country at the end of this month.
“I hope not [that funds will be lost], although we know that some commitments that the [outgoing] Portuguese government made have not yet been fulfilled, which have already caused delays in the disbursement of some tranches and we know that there will be one that will be available at the end of March,” said Luís Montenegro.
“I hope that there won’t be any problem in fulfilling the commitments that still depend exclusively on the government that is in office” in order to receive this next sum, he added, speaking to Portuguese journalists in Brussels after a meeting of around 15 minutes with Ursula von der Leyen, the head of the institution and also the European People’s Party (EPP) list leader in the European elections.
Luís Montenegro said he had told her “specific issues, such as trying to make up for the delays in implementing the PRR”.
“It was one of the issues that was on the table in the conversation we had today and it will be a fundamental point of our action once we take office. Sometimes a very optimistic outlook is given on some dossiers and this is one of them, [but] the truth is that there are delays that have never been recovered and there is also the desire that I have to be able to use this funding boost to be able to boost our economic activity in order to have a more lasting growth cycle and to be able to attract and retain talent in Portugal,” he said.
The Prime Minister-designate is in Brussels to attend the EPP summit. After meeting the outgoing Prime Minister, António Costa, to exchange greetings, Luís Montenegro will later meet the President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, also from the EPP.
