WIREDGOV

The European Commission yesterday disbursed €2.25 billion to Germany in pre-financing, equivalent to 9% of the country's financial allocation under the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF). This corresponds to the pre-financing amount requested by Germany in its recovery and resilience plan. The pre-financing payment will help kick-start the implementation of the crucial investment and reform measures outlined in Germany's recovery and resilience plan.

The Commission will authorise further disbursements based on the implementation of the investments and reforms outlined in Germany's recovery and resilience plan. The country is set to receive €25.6 billion in total, fully consisting of grants, over the lifetime of its plan.

Yesterday's disbursement follows the recent successful implementation of the first borrowing operations under NextGenerationEU. By the end of the year, the Commission intends to raise up to a total of €80 billion in long-term funding, to be complemented by short-term EU-Bills, to fund the first planned disbursements to Member States under NextGenerationEU.  

Part of NextGenerationEU, the RRF will provide €723.8 billion (in current prices) to support investments and reforms across Member States. The German plan is part of the unprecedented EU response to emerge stronger from the COVID-19 crisis, fostering the green and digital transitions and strengthening resilience and cohesion in our societies.

Supporting transformative investments and reform projects

The RRF in Germany finances investments and reforms that are expected to have a deeply transformative effect on Germany's economy and society. Here are some of these projects:

• Securing the green transition: The German plan will invest €1.5 billion in green hydrogen to help decarbonise the German economy. €2.5 billion will be used to help citizens acquire more than 800,000 decarbonised vehicles.
• Supporting the digital transition: The German plan will devote €3 billion to making more than 215 public services digitally available and allot €2.25 billion to large-scale cross-border European initiatives in microelectronics and next generation cloud infrastructures.
• Reinforcing economic and social resilience: The German plan will invest €3 billion in modernising hospitals to improve their digital infrastructure, emergency capacities, tele-medicine, robotics, and IT and cyber-security. The plan also includes a joint programme at national and regional levels to tackle investment bottlenecks, shortening administrative planning and approval procedures, standardising requirements to request financing subsidies and accelerating housing construction.

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