News item | 13-12-2024 | 2:45 PM
At the proposal of Minister Heinen of Finance, the Council of Ministers has approved the submission of the second payment request for the Dutch Recovery and Resilience Plan to the European Commission. This means that the Netherlands is entitled to €1.2 billion of the €5.4 billion reserved for the Netherlands from the European Recovery and Resilience Facility. This facility was established during the corona crisis and helps Member States to recover and increase the resilience of their economies. The first payment request, worth €1.3 billion, was officially approved by the European Commission in September and paid to the Netherlands.
Milestones and objectives
In order to receive the reserved money from the European Recovery and Resilience Facility, the Netherlands has made agreements about milestones and objectives to be achieved. These are part of the Dutch Recovery and Resilience Plan. The money from this plan is intended to contribute to improvements in the areas of digitalization, affordable housing, education and healthcare. For the second payment request, this concerns, for example, making a structural budget available for further training and retraining of unemployed people with a weak employment position. More than fifty hospitals have also received funds to expand their ICU capacity by training staff and installing additional ICU beds, and innovation in life sciences and healthcare has been stimulated. In addition, agreements have been concluded between provinces and municipalities on the number of new homes to be built and compensation has been awarded for the termination of 277 pig farms. Digitization in the infrastructure has also been implemented: ProRail has made further preparations for creating a future-proof and digital train safety system, and Rijkswaterstaat has installed more than 150 intelligent roadside stations to improve traffic flow.
European Commission assessment
The European Commission now has two months to assess the payment request. They assess whether the milestones and objectives have actually been achieved and whether it has been demonstrated that the resources have been spent lawfully.
Amendment to the Recovery and Resilience Plan
To raise the remaining money, the Netherlands intends to submit three more payment requests. To do this, the Netherlands is currently preparing a change request. Member States can, under specific conditions, change their plans. For example, to correct administrative errors or reduce administrative burdens. They can also change when more suitable alternatives present themselves or when measures are no longer feasible (in a timely manner) due to circumstances beyond the Member State’s control. Consider inflation or labor shortages.
The Netherlands is committed to providing suitable alternatives for (parts of) the Aviation in Transition measures and the renewal of the IT infrastructure at the Ministry of Defense. The possibilities are also explored to propose suitable alternatives for the reform of the energy tax and the reform of the car tax. In addition, objective circumstances have ensured that (parts of) the measures Offshore Wind, Project ZES, European Rail Traffic Management System, Safe, Smart and Sustainable Mobility and intelligent roadside stations are not achieved (in a timely manner). The Basic Disability Insurance for the Self-Employed (BAZ) has also been delayed due to challenges in the legislative process. Finally, some changes of an administrative nature are proposed.