Costa confident recovery and resilience ratified by mid-April

  • Lusa
  • 26 March 2021

Portugal's prime minister, António Costa, is confident that the ratification process of the Recovery and Resilience Plans of the 27 member states will be completed in mid-April.

Portugal’s prime minister is confident that the ratification process of the Recovery and Resilience Plans of the 27 member states will be completed in mid-April, adding that he would like to have the Portuguese programme approved by the end of that month.

António Costa was speaking at a press conference in Lisbon after participating in the European Council meeting by video conference.

According to Costa, who chairs the presidency of the Council of the European Union until June, only four countries (Austria, Poland, Hungary and the Netherlands) have not yet defined a timetable for national ratification of the Recovery and Resilience Plan (RRP).

He told reporters there was a common goal for all countries to complete the process by mid-April. Last week, in an important effort by the Portuguese presidency, one of the issues blocking ratification by the Baltic States was overcome with the European Parliament, he said, before highlighting the Netherlands’ political example.

Costa then said that the Netherlands, which had recently held elections, had taken the cautious position of proceeding with this ratification in the lower house before dissolving parliament.

Regarding the Portuguese government’s timetable for delivering its RRP to the European Commission, Costa said that there were 1661 contributions following the second round of public consultation.

The prime minister reiterated that the goal of having the first RRP approved by the end of April remains.

“We would very much like to be among those first plans approved by the European Commission,” he added.