Slovakia Seeks Highest Ever Payment from Recovery Plan for Almost €1 bn

Bratislava, 30 June (TASR) - Slovakia has submitted its sixth application for payment from the Recovery and Resilience Plan in the amount of €977 million, the highest ever request for funds from the European mechanism, from which Slovakia should receive a total of €6.4 billion, Vice-premier for the Recovery Plan and Knowledge-based Economy Peter Kmec (Voice-SD) said on Monday. The vice-premier stressed that Slovakia is following the timetable agreed with the European Commission (EC). "Slovakia has already approved five payment requests. A sixth one of almost €1 billion is on its way and we still have three payment requests to make for a total of €6.4 billion. The seventh one will be submitted in the autumn this year, and next year, the final year of the implementation of the recovery plan, we have two more, the eighth and the ninth payment requests," he stated. Under the current sixth application, Slovakia is to receive almost €1 billion for meeting 31 milestones and targets, including a number of milestones that will be finally declared in the final ninth payment application. "But already at this stage we had to declare, for example, 13,000 houses that will already be more energy efficient, that is about half of the final ambition. We are also declaring the renovation of 48,000 square metres of public historic buildings. There are important reforms that must connect renewable energy sources to our energy infrastructure," said Kmec. am/mcs