In total, it will be close to 109 billion euros: the money from the PRR is not being used as expected.
The famous Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR) had 157 reforms, 254 associated investments and an estimated total of 109 billion euros. This is to “help the creation, development and operation of companies” in the European Union in general, not just in Portugal.
But the European Union countries are wasting this money. The warning appears in the European Court of Auditors published this Monday.
As priorities were: encouraging private investment to promote economic recovery, improving access to finance, simplifying tax systems, reducing bureaucracy or increasing cooperation between education and business to improve the supply of skills.
However, only 25% of the recommendations were responded to – and even so, none were fully executed. About half had “little or no response”, says .
Almost half of the difficulties of companies highlighted by the EU was practically no responsehighlights the report.
Thus, some of the basic problems remained unresolved – why “7% of the recommendations were completely ignored.”
“The EU used bazooka funds as bait to get countries to carry out important reforms of the business environment, but still Can’t see most results”, laments Ivana Maletić, from the European Court of Auditors.
Ivana also criticizes that the Recovery and Resilience Mechanism (MRR) “can make life easier for companies, but didn’t take advantage its potential.”
In the report’s key question: “Has all this money and effort actually made life easier for small and medium-sized businesses? Unfortunately, the answer is not as much as expected, or not significantly”, replied Ivana Maletić.
Portugal even gave a “comprehensive” response to the recommendations: the Portuguese PRR has four reforms and nine investments to modernize education and professional training systems. A reform is needed that improves “cooperation between higher education, public authorities and companies”, but more is needed to improve the structural issue: companies’ innovation capacity.
Here, there has been progress in adequate access to financing and liquidity, especially for small and medium-sized companies, and also in facilitating strategic instruments.
But Portugal was joined only by Denmark, Greece, Spain, Croatia, Cyprus and the Netherlands – which also gave comprehensive responses.
