P. Kmec: Slovakia will not lose a euro from the fifth EU payment through the recovery and resilience plan

Brussels – The Slovak request for a payment of 570.4 million euros from the recovery and resilience plan was the main topic of Tuesday’s discussions between Deputy Prime Minister for the recovery and resilience plan and knowledge economy Peter Kmec (Hlas-SD) and representatives of the European Commission (EC). Kmec emphasized that Slovakia will not lose a single euro from this payment, reports TASR correspondent.

Kmec specified that on Tuesday he discussed with European Commissioner for Trade Maroš Šefčovič, European Commissioner for Economy and Productivity Valdis Dombrovskis, and also with the Director-General of the Recovery Plan Section Céline Gauer at the EU executive’s headquarters.

“We evaluated the successful fulfillment of the fifth payment request of 570 million euros. This payment is currently in the approval process, and I can state that these financial resources should arrive in the account of the Slovak Republic during May,” he described the situation.

The Deputy Prime Minister reminded that parallel to this, a revision of the recovery plan is also underway, where some unrealistic goals have been successfully transformed into goals that are already underway, worth 450 million euros. According to him, these will be used for the construction of kindergartens and primary schools, social service homes, and the construction and reconstruction of hospitals.

Kmec added that Slovakia has met the milestones and goals within the fifth payment request from the recovery plan, except for the milestone focused on the expropriation of private land in national parks. He reminded that this milestone of 27 million euros “is going into revision,” which means that it is not lost money, as it will be used for alternative measures. According to him, EC experts recognized some technical problems associated with the unmet milestone and agreed to reallocate financial resources to other areas.

The Commission will also approve the sixth and seventh payments to Slovakia this year, with around one billion euros expected in June and 550 million euros in October.

Another topic of discussions with Commissioner Dombrovskis was the reconstruction of Ukraine and Slovak-Ukrainian cross-border cooperation and the implementation of strategic projects in the border area. Kmec confirmed that all projects that support Ukraine’s integration process are progressing successfully. These include the expansion of border crossings, the construction of road and railway infrastructure, and the modernization of electrical networks. In this context, he reminded that the third joint meeting of the Slovak and Ukrainian governments is being prepared, but the date has not yet been set. (April 8)

“We evaluated the successful fulfillment of the fifth payment request of 570 million euros. This payment is currently in the approval process, and I can state that these financial resources should arrive in the account of the Slovak Republic during May.” Peter Kmec