Portugal would have lost "at least two billion euros" of the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) without the reprogramming that was carried out over time, said the Secretary of State for Planning and Regional Development Hélder Reis in a parliamentary discussion on the RRF’s execution. 

"The reprogramming must be interpreted as managerial acts so we can meet the RRF’s goal” which is “to bring to our country the maximum financial allocation made available”, the member of Government claimed.

The Portuguese RRF has undergone several reprogramming initiatives to allocate sums to other projects, since those initially set in 2021 were no longer in condition to be concluded by the deadline of 31 August.

Hélder Reis stressed that with the approval of the most recent reprogramming and delivery of the 9th payment request, the country guaranteed compliance with 75% of the milestones and targets agreed on with Brussels. 

In these reprogramming acts, 85 milestones and targets were removed. Hélder Reis explained that 75% of these relate to the "merger and elimination of more administrative elements” and "that only » 25% refer to a revision in investment area”.

The Government has already guaranteed that several works that could not be executed under the RRF will be executed using funds from the State Budget; the Secretary of State noted that there are already solutions for the investments in schools and housing, and “we are working in the field of health and business parks.”