Cyprus applies for more recovery cash
Acting Permanent Secretary of DG Growth at the Cypriot Finance Ministry Andreas Zachariades said on Thursday that as of Friday, Cyprus will be among the first 10 European Union member-states to have submitted a third payment request from the Recovery and Resilience Mechanism of the EU.
Addressing the 2nd Annual Event for the Cyprus Recovery and Resilience Plan, he noted that “Cyprus is now hours away from the simultaneous submission of the second and third payment requests from the European Mechanism, for the disbursement of a total amount of 152.3 million euros.”
This, he said, was made possible with the approval by the Council of the European Union, on December 8, of the amendment proposed by the Republic of Cyprus to the initial Cyprus Recovery and Resilience Plan, which received the positive evaluation of the European Commission. The proposal of the Cypriot side, he said, was submitted to the European Commission on September 1, 2023, after long discussions and consultations with all involved bodies, both at the national and European level.
Furthermore, he said that the adoption of the revised national Recovery and Resilience Plan and the successful completion of the 16 and 22 goals and milestones included in the second and third payment requests “lead us to their submission tomorrow for the disbursement of €152.3 million from the Recovery Mechanism.”
Following this new disbursement, he added, Cyprus will collect a cumulative amount of more than €400 million. He pointed out that in addition to the €152.3 million expected in 2024, with the submission and approval of the initial plan in 2021, there was a disbursement of the advance from the mechanism, amounting to €157 million. In addition, with the achievement of the first 14 milestones of the Recovery Plan, the first tranche of €85 million was disbursed in December 2022. With the approval of the amendment of the plan last week, he added, Cyprus is expected to collect an additional advance of €21 million, for the new REPowerEU, by the end of this year.
He said that this amounts to approximately 40% of the total allocation from the mechanism for Cyprus, noting that after the submission on Friday of the two requests Cyprus will be among the first 10 states to have submitted a third payment request from the mechanism.
