Urgent measures adopted to speed up projects linked to the European Recovery Facility (Next Generation EU)
The Spanish Government has approved Royal Decree Law 36/2020, of 30 December, approving urgent measures for the modernisation of the Public Administration and for the implementation of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan (BOE no. 341, of 31 December).
This Royal Decree-Law aims to lay the foundations to facilitate the overall management of the necessary package of far-reaching measures, bringing together the Multiannual Financial Mechanism (2021-2027) and the European Recovery Instrument-Next Generation (2021-2026). With these funds, the European Union aims to boost support to Member States, their businesses and reinforce key programmes for a stronger and more resilient market and triggering the double transition, digital and green, of the European economy.
The Royal Decree-Law includes urgent measures to achieve a governance model that allows for the selection, evaluation, monitoring and coordination of the different investment projects and programmes, incorporating horizontal regulatory reforms to speed up the implementation of projects and simplifying processing procedures, without reducing the guarantees and control required by the EU regulatory framework.
The areas of action of the Royal Decree-Law are as follows:
- Reforms to make Public Administration agile and efficient in order to be able to undertake the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan.
- Design of new types of potential beneficiaries of aid from these funds, encouraging public-private collaboration, such as groups of individuals and/or legal entities, the creation of consortiums, modifications to works and services concession contracts and the new figure of Strategic Projects for Economic Recovery and Transformation (PERTE).
- Design of the governance model. Creation of three governance entities: Commission for Recovery, Transformation and Resilience (to be chaired by the President of the Government), Technical Support Committee (to the Commission and the authority responsible for the Recovery and Resilience Mechanism in Spain, which is the European Funds Directorate of the Ministry of Finance) and the Sectoral Conference of the Plan with the Autonomous Communities (chaired by the Ministry of Finance).
- Streamlining procedures by seeking urgent processing, reduction of deadlines and flexibility of aid.
- Efficient public management based on the reorganisation of resources, the prioritisation of needs and the fulfilment of objectives. All of this, framed within a Strategic Planning Instrument.
It is worth highlighting, as a new and permanent feature, the PERTE figure, which is key to the design of driving force projects with a great capacity to boost economic growth, employment and the competitiveness of the Spanish economy. There will be a State Register of entities and operators interested in PERTEs, still pending regulatory regulation, managed by the Ministry of Finance (3 months to implement it from 30 December 2020) and which could be a prerequisite to be beneficiaries of some aid.
At artica+i we put our experience in project management consultancy at the service of our clients to transform the arrival of European funds from the Recovery Instrument and the Multiannual Financial Mechanism (€1.8 B for 2021-2027) into real opportunities. With this objective, we have launched a new service for the global management of European funds that aims to be a support point for companies and associations in the definition of multiannual Strategic Plans aligned with the guidelines of these funds.
