15
Dec
2021
Watch
State of play of the RRF (Recovery and Resilience Facility) (debate)
Madam President, I also want to start on a positive note because I think we have achieved a lot when we look at this year. I think there was a lot of work done, both at Member State level and by the Commission, but also obviously within this Parliament, trying to hold you all accountable in this work. If we think about the adoption of the RRF Regulation, the preparation and also approval of some of the plans, at least the payment requests, the scrutiny that has been done, a lot of work was done. So congratulations on that. But, obviously, now we are entering the next year and so the question is what kind of ambition and what kind of control is necessary for the next phase of the RRF? And here I want to ask us to really try to stay on top of this ambition because we still need to stay strong when it comes to Hungary and Poland and some of the other elements in the plans – we need to ensure that they are corrected. We need to ensure that the operational arrangements are of high quality and fair to all Member States and ensure especially that we have agreed on spending and where it is supposed to go. I would also say that some of the Member States, like Germany, can be ambitious in re-routing some of the money. I mean, there are still EUR four billion, under the new German government, going to hybrid cars, so I think if we have a change of government, this can also be reflected. And this is true for Bulgaria as well. And then we come to control, and here I think we have a couple of elements, which really mean that we need to step-up our game. The first one is we promised to green bond holders that the money will really be spent on green spending. So we need to keep this promise by actually sample-sizing, by testing, by scrutinising in detail the projects that are supposed to be green. And we need to keep the promise to EU citizens that we will use this money to really build solidarity and a strong Union when it comes to economic governance. So I wish us all a restful and great break to be able to do that well.