Portugal: First payment of EU recovery fund to be made next week

Portugal will receive the European Commission’s first payment of €2.2 billion from the Recovery and Resilience Plan (RRP) in the first week of August, according to a source linked to the process. The amount corresponds to 13% (percentage of pre-financing) of the €16.6 billion in grants and loans that Portugal will receive until 2026.

Portugal will receive a pre-financing payment of around €1.8 billion (€1,807,948,257), which corresponds to 13% of the grants allocated to the country. In addition, it will receive €350,000 (350,870,000) relating to 13% of the loans it has requested, for a total of €2.15 billion. These are the figures for Portugal’s pre-financing that appear in the European legislation adopted by the countries’ ambassadors and ECOFIN.

European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen (and Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis) had hoped to make the first payments in July, but their target will be pushed back to early August, as EU Budget Commissioner Johannes Hahn has announced. At the signing of the financing and loan agreement on Monday, the Portuguese finance minister, João Leão, said the first payment would be made “in the next few days.”

The signing of these agreements between the Portuguese government and the European Commission was the missing step following the approval of the Portuguese RRP at ECOFIN on July 15.

Portugal should now be one of the first European countries to receive the first payment from the recovery fund, but it will not be the only one. In total, around €50 billion will be distributed among 12 countries: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Portugal, Slovakia, and Spain.