Government joins elite with third plea for €152.3M

Acting Permanent Secretary of DG Growth at the Finance Ministry, Andreas Zachariades, said on Thursday that as of Friday, Cyprus will be among the first ten EU member states that have submitted the 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 request from the European Mechanism, for the disbursement of a total amount of €152.3 million."

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 first 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 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 2nd and 3rd 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 by the end of this year, an additional advance of €21 million, for the new REPowerEU.

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 member states that will have submitted a third payment request from the mechanism.

In her address, Head of the European Commission Delegation to Cyprus, Myrto Zambarta, congratulated Cyprus on the progress achieved so far regarding the implementation of the Plan and its successful revision on December 8, noting that the national plan of Cyprus includes important reforms and investments.

"I would like to encourage Cyprus to continue and to speed up its efforts to implement its ambitious plan. The mechanism works with payments based on results, so the work is being done, and must continue. We have until 2026 to make it a reality and ensure the effective and fair digital and green transition of Cyprus," she concluded.