11 July 2023

Today the steering committee meeting for the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), chaired by Minister Raffaele Fitto, approved the amending proposal related to the fourth instalment and promptly forwarded it to the European Commission.

The revision concerns both objective circumstances that required amending the NRRP targets and milestones as well as merely formal changes, in full compliance with EU regulations on the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF).

In spite of having the most complex Recovery and Resilience Plan across the EU, both in terms of financial resources and intertwined investments and reforms, Italy has already submitted the first three requests for payment, equalled only by Greece and Spain. As to all other EU countries, four submitted two requests, eleven only one request, and nine no request at all, respectively.

To date, no EU Member State has submitted a payment request for the fourth instalment.

In order to understand the path undertaken by our Government to revise the fourth instalment, it is necessary to recall some key steps that allowed Italy to reach – today – an agreement with the European Commission such to guarantee the success of the revision approved at today's steering committee meeting.

On 3 March 2023, the European Commission issued the guidelines to introduce the RePowerEU Chapter and update the NRRP.

Hence, Italy began talks with the Commission for amending the milestones and targets established for the fourth instalment.

As reported in Parliament, in April, Italy informed the Commission of the need to make some changes, including purely formal ones, to certain achievements set for the first half of 2023.

Systematic and fruitful collaboration has since been ensured between the Department for European Policies, the public administrations in charge of interventions, and the European Commission, in order to reach consensus on the revision of the milestones and targets related to the fourth instalment that would be consistent with NRRP principles and final objectives. The agreement thus reached by our Government as a result of the work carried out in recent months will enable Italy to submit a regular request for payment for the fourth instalment's full amount, thus preserving the financial contribution allocated for our Country.

Late yesterday afternoon, the Commission Services completed the technical examination of the individual amendment proposals. Hence, yesterday evening it was decided to promptly convene today's steering committee meeting for the Government’s overall assessment of amendments.

In this regard, it is worth noting that all the proposed changes were submitted by the individual ministers in charge of their respective measures.

The Government is therefore fulfilling all the commitments agreed upon at EU level and has accomplished the revision process on schedule, in agreement with the European Commission and in compliance with relevant regulations. As a matter of fact, Regulation (EU) 241/2021 establishing the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) does not set binding deadlines for submitting payment requests, but merely establishes that each Member State, having reached the milestones and targets set in its own Plan, may submit a payment request twice a year. In particular, the 30 June deadline for reaching the half-yearly milestones and targets is merely indicative as noted in the EU Council decision approving the National Recovery and Resilience Plan.