The Government includes tolls in the 70 changes to the Recovery Plan that it has requested from the EU with concealment

The amazing paragraph appears lost as if nothing on page 59 of what has been made public of the Addendum. This is officially called “the second phase of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan of the Kingdom of Spain” and it is the request for an extra 94,000 million from Brussels to ensure the around 160,000 million allocated to Spain in European funds.. The Government quickly requested the 70,000 million grants in 2021, but the loan chapter was missing.

The unusual paragraph of the public document presented by the first vice president, Nadia Calviño, reads as follows: «It has been agreed with the European Commission to take advantage of the Addendum to: correct typographical errors and inconsistencies in the wording between the different parts of the Council Implementation Decision in 13 cases; the adaptation of the wording of the milestones to the new circumstances in 13 cases and; the adjustment of the calendar to the new context in 44 cases. In addition, 5 new milestones have been added to the plan». In other words, the Ministry has introduced 70 changes to the original plan without negotiating them with the opposition, despite sending the document last June in the run-up to the electoral campaign with effects of deployment in the next legislature.

What are those changes? In the 192 pages of the public document there is not a trace and it is that the elections are noticeable in this whole episode of launching the positive and hiding the negative.

On the one hand, the Addendum was presented in full pre-campaign as an indicator that the Government obtains European funds on a blanket. On the other, it was decided not to reveal the changes that it implies, because it would be publicly admitting before the elections the failures of the plan that must be renegotiated. One of them is, as this newspaper published last Monday, the renegotiation of how to finance the maintenance of highways and roads after having renounced “due to the elections” to impose the promised payment for use so that “those who pollute pay”. The Prime Minister himself, Pedro Sánchez, confirmed it on the last day of the campaign after finally admitting that he has this payment plan in his commitments with the EU. But there are another 69 changes.

The consultants that follow the execution of the funds point out that there is a failure behind the scenes of these hidden modifications. “Once the deadline for the fulfillment of certain commitments of the Plan set for December 2022 has expired, the Addendum provides for including the delay of 70 reform milestones and investment objectives -which have not been specified- justified in the concurrence of objective circumstances that make it difficult to comply”, says the so-called Radar Next Generation EU that EY Insights sends to its clients.

For her part, Paloma Baena, from Llorente y Cuenca, points out that the bulk of the changes is “extension of the terms of those milestones and objectives that are considered difficult to achieve within the initially agreed term”. And he agrees that “of all these changes, no detailed information has been provided so far.”

Sources from the Ministry of Economy decline to explain to this newspaper the changes requested from Brussels: “They are in the documentation delivered to the European Commission”. And why not reveal them now if, according to the above paragraph, there is already an “agreement” on them with Brussels? In the Ministry they respond that we must wait for formal validation from the Commission. On the other hand, in the community Executive they assure this newspaper that there is no such agreement, because the Addendum is still in the process of evaluation and that, in addition, it can be extended beyond the two months established to assess the request of Spain for the electoral change. The European commissioner, Paolo Gentiloni, knows from the mouth of Alberto Núñez Feijóo himself that Calviño is hiding information from him and both he and his colleague Valdis Dombrovskis are willing, according to the sources consulted, that, if there is a possible change of government, their analysis period be extended to allow time for changes.

This Addendum is an accumulation of government errors. It should have been requested from the start, as the astute Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi did at the time.. There were two reasons: the first, to collect double the advance in 2021. In August of that year, Spain received the first transfer from the European Commission charged to the funds as an advance and it was limited to 9,000 million, because that was equivalent to the stipulated 13% of the requested funds: 70,000 million grants at that time without the current additional 94,000 million. Instead, on those same dates, Rome received 24,900 million, because Draghi has already requested the entire set of the plan assigned to his country, including loans. In other words, presenting it so late deprived Spain of an extra 10,000 million in 2021.

The second mistake is that the conditions of the EU loans respond to the rates of the moment and are currently much worse than when Draghi and half a dozen other countries, including Portugal, applied two years before Calviño.

The advantage of doing it now, yes, is to take advantage to change errors in the plan and gain time given the slow execution. According to a study by EY Insigths, Spain is the first country to request money from Brussels, but the twelfth in execution until the end of 2022.

For their part, Llorente y Cuenca maintains that precisely the presentation of the Addendum has contributed to slowing down the already desperately slow execution. “Thus, if during 2021 20,620 million were committed and during the two semesters of 2022 they exceeded 14,000 million, the volume of funds committed during the first semester of 2023 has dropped to only 7,770 million (…) The clearest reasons for this slowdown seem to be the prolonged final negotiation of the Addendum”.

Whoever manages to govern after the elections of 23-J will have to straighten the course, avoid so much desert contest (5,670 million without adjudication for now) and put an end to such an unpresentable lack of transparency.