May 25 (SeeNews) - Slovenia should update its recovery and resilience plan (RRP) to avoid delays in its implementation, the European Commission said.
"The addendum of the RRP and the additional chapter on REPowerEU should establish a realistic timeline for the remaining payment requests and should be submitted swiftly to avoid any further delay or disruption in the implementation of the plan," the EU Commission said in a country report on Wednesday.
Slovenia has so far submitted one payment request resulting in an overall disbursement of 49.6 million euro ($53.4 million) and to advance faster with the implementation of its RRP, it is necessary to strengthen governance structure and administrative capacity, as well as to ensure that the necessary decisions are taken without delays, the EU Commission said.
The government is preparing a request to modify the RRP and revise some existing measures in light of changing circumstances in the spring and intends to submit the second payment request in autumn, the EC noted.
Last week, Slovenian finance minister Klemen Bostjancic said talks with EC on updating the plan are still ongoing and expressed his belief that an agreement will be reached in the coming weeks.
According to calculations published by the EC, Slovenia will be able to use 1.49 billion eurо in grants from the recovery fund by the end of 2026, along with 705 million euro in refundable European funds. So far, Slovenia has received 281 million euro, which includes the first payment in the amount of 50 million euro and 231 million euro of pre-financing.
($ = 0.92875 euro)