Vitoria (EFE).- The Basque Government will be able to decide which projects will be financed in Euskadi from the Sustainability Fund for the Autonomous Communities launched by the EU.
With this, the Spanish Executive meets its demand to participate in a regional Perte.
This is one of the five agreements reached this Friday by the First Vice President and Minister of Economy, Nadia Calviño, and the Lehendakari, Iñigo Urkullu.
Both have met in Vitoria to discuss the deployment of European Next Generation funds in the Basque Country.
The appointment has been held at the initiative of Calviño.
It is a response to a letter from the Lehendakari in which he conveyed his “displeasure” at how the Government is managing European funds.
The reason given is not to face it as a real “opportunity for real co-governance”.
The minister has confessed that she does not understand the “displeasure” that the Lehendakari had.
According to her, the central Executive always has “the will to work hand in hand” with the Basque.
In any case, both leaders have left the meeting with a positive feeling.
A sustainability fund of 20,000 million
Urkullu, who has described the meeting as “absolutely satisfactory”, has congratulated himself on the agreement reached so that the Basque Country can decide
“Logically, within the framework of the areas marked by Europe,” he has qualified.
In addition, the lehendakari has received the written commitment of the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, with the Basque projects related to cross-border interconnections in the field of transport and energy.
The head of the Spanish Executive has also shown his “commitment to the potential of the Basque Country in terms of green hydrogen.”
«Euskadi is one of the regions where one of the innovative projects will be located and one of the first axes of the green hydrogen trunk network»
It has announced that a proposal for underground hydrogen storage in the Basque Country will be analysed.
The two governments have agreed that the loans received from the Recovery and Resilience Mechanism do not count in the autonomous deficit, if they are mobilized through financial operations.
“Yes they will compute in the debt, so each community will decide the convenience of its use.”
“This is the path agreed to the figure demanded by the Basque Government for the figure that we call the ‘MRR Bonus'”, explained Ukullu.
European funds, at a high rate
The minister, who has described the meeting as “constructive and productive”, has valued the pace with which the European funds are being deployed.
In this sense, he specified that the Basque Country has already received almost 850 million with 7,600 beneficiaries.
Most of them (86%) are companies and the rest are institutions.
Calviño has reiterated his commitment to “work hand in hand” with the Basque Government “for the benefit of companies and citizens”.
Another of the agreements reached at the meeting refers to the visit of the Basque Country by the commissioners of various Perte (sectoral plans.
Specifically, for the electric and connected vehicle, industrial decarbonization, the agri-food sector, and microelectronics and semiconductors.
Sources from the Department of Economy and Finance have highlighted the importance of these visits given the potential that Basque companies have to fit into these Pertes and receive European funding.
other funds
At the meeting they also spoke about the Corporate Tax bonus fund in relation to R&D and the social inclusion reform fund in relation to the IMV.
In this field they have agreed that technicians from both governments analyze these figures to guarantee that the Economic Agreement is complied with.
In addition, it has been decided that the “dysfunctions” detected in the European funds transferred to the Basque Country (due, for example, to the fact that the money arrives with a specific objective already achieved in the Basque Country) be channeled through bilateral relations.”
For the moment, the lehendakari has highlighted, the money destined for the extension of broadband in industrial estates has been “reprogrammed”.
The objective of this reprogramming work, added the minister, is to be able to execute 100% of the funds. EFE
