Portugal delivered the proposal to adjust the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) for the European Commission’s appraisal on 31 March. The aim of the document is to ensure the RRF’s full execution within the set timeframes and guarantee that Portugal does not miss out on a single euro in grants.

The adjustment concentrates on the fully executable investments, ensuring the facility’s overall compliance.

The RRF’s execution has taken place at a time of significant changes in the international setting and, more recently, the extreme weather events that hit several parts of the country, with an impact on the projects’ execution.

Due to the storms, the European Commission introduced greater flexibility, enabling the projects in the fields of health, education (schools) and housing, that are not fully feasible by August 226, to be rescaled, maintaining the executable portion within the RRF timeframe, as long as this is an autonomous and functional investment.

The remaining part of the projects not concluded may be funded using national funds or other EU funding.

Under this RRF adjustment, a revision of the milestones and targets calendar was conducted, bringing some forward and delaying others, with adjustments between the 9th and the 10th payment requests, noting an adjustment between the various RRF investments of around 516 million euros.

To boost the country’s infrastructure resilience, the adjustment proposal includes an increase of around 81 million euros for communications, security, and energy.

According to the Minister of Economy and Territorial Cohesion Castro Almeida, "the adjustment now presented does not alter the facility’s ambition in any way whatsoever. We intend to make sure that every euro invested represents real impact, even in a demanding context that is scarred by extreme storms".

"We are adapting execution to guarantee the facility’s compliance, keeping the full financial envelope and making Portugal more resilient and competitive", Minister Castro Almeida claimed.