Today’s payment of €115 million (net of pre-financing) in grants under the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) was made possible by Cyprus’ fulfilment of 37 milestones and targets.
They cover key reforms and investments in the areas of public health, education, energy efficiency and renewable energy, protection against forest fires and floods, water management, agriculture, research and innovation, financial support to enterprises, public administration, anti-corruption, and taxation. Other reforms put forward aim to improve the legal and institutional framework for fighting corruption, and to facilitate strategic investments.
As for all Member States, payments under the RRF, the key instrument at the heart of NextGenerationEU, are performance-based and depend on the implementation by Cyprus of the investments and reforms described in its Recovery and Resilience Plan.
On 15 December 2023, Cyprus submitted to the Commission a second request for payment of €152 million (net of pre-financing) under the RRF, covering 38 milestones. On 16 September 2024, the Commission adopted a preliminary assessment of Cyprus’ request for payment, having found that one milestone related to taxation had not been satisfactorily fulfilled. The Commission acknowledged the steps already taken by Cyprus to fulfil this milestone, though important work remains to be done. The ‘payment suspension’ procedure is foreseen by the RRF Regulation to give Member States additional time to fulfil outstanding milestones as explained in the Communication published on 21 February 2023, which applies to all Member States.
The opinion of the Economic and Financial Committee on the payment request has paved the way for the Commission to adopt a decision on the disbursement of the funds linked to the 37 milestones that have been assessed as satisfactorily fulfilled.
Cyprus’ overall Recovery and Resilience Plan will be financed by €1.2 billion, of which €1.02 billion in grants and €200 million in loans. You can find more information on Cyprus’ Recovery and Resilience Plan on this page, which features an interactive map of projects financed by the RRF, as well as on the Recovery and Resilience Scoreboard. More information on the process of payment requests under the RRF can be found in this document of questions and answers.
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Source: European Commission
