Recovery fund projects fast-tracked
Valencia has presented applications for around 200 schemes worth €12 billion
THE REGIONAL government has approved a decree law of urgent financial measures to simplify and speed up the processing of projects and investments financed by EU funds to recover from the crisis caused by Covid-19.
This will also enable access to as much EU funding as possible to make the region’s productive model more resilient, sustainable and digital.
So far the regional government has presented applications for around 200 projects worth a total of €12 billion.
Regional vice-president Mónica Oltra said this was necessary in order to reconstruct the economy, facilitate decision-making processes and better manage public funds.
“It will enable us to concentrate this financial effort in a reduced period of time which is starting now in 2021,” she said.
Government departments will therefore be able to ‘maximise the projects they set up in order to obtain the most resources possible’.
Regional treasury councillor Vicent Soler said the ‘exceptional seriousness and depth’ of this crisis requires ‘urgent action to eliminate any obstacle that could slow down the recovery measures’, while at the same time still ‘guaranteeing the necessary legal control and security’.
Modernisation of the regional administration is also required to improve its efficiency and ‘correct weaknesses in some procedures’ in line with national government requirements.
New features of the decree law include enabling EU-financed projects and investments to be treated as urgent, thus reducing the time it takes to implement them by half – except deadlines for applications and appeals.
The urgency is due to short deadlines imposed by the EU, as 60% of spending commitments must be contracted out by December 31, 2022.
As such, any spending can be processed before the financial year and be charged to the following one, as long as the funding has been guaranteed and is allocated over a maximum of five years.
Nevertheless, projects will also be submitted to a process of advance verification to confirm that they comply with EU
directives.
Projects eligible for EU subsidies which are to be put out to competitive tender will be able to publish their rules and invite bids in one step to save time, while still maintaining the periods for the public to register objections and for legal and audit reports.
Public sector institutions responsible for managing these funds will have to identify their spending so it can be monitored to ensure it complies with terms and conditions.
The regional government will also be able to set up consortiums, or assign existing
ones, to manage and execute projects with recovery funds, which could include actions, grants, advice services or public contracts.
Every regional government department will have to publish any specific rules or procedures it may have within two months, otherwise these will be automatically abolished.
The objective of this is so the public can consult all the actions and instructions of each department on a single document which will be published on its website and updated at least monthly.