Subject: Recovery fund and combating population decline
Population decline, especially in rural and inland areas, and ageing both pose problems for the future of the European Union.
In its communication entitled ‘A long-term Vision for the EU’s Rural Areas’1, the Commission says that Member States should use the Recovery and Resilience Facility to cover existing investment gaps in rural areas and that ‘funding needs to be mobilised coherently, in complementarity with national and regional Member State interventions, which remain crucial to providing comprehensive support to rural areas’.
The Spanish Government announced that it would invest EUR 10 billion from its recovery fund in tackling population decline2. However, and as was recently reported3, 35 % of the budget allocated to this in 2021 has not been used.
Given that population decline is a serious problem for rural areas in Spain, and that investment is sorely needed:
1. Does the Commission consider that the budget allocated in the recovery funds to combating the decline in population numbers is being used efficiently?
2. Does it believe that investing more of these funds directly in regional projects would be a more effective way of combating population decline than allocating a large slice of them to bureaucratic running costs?
1 COM(2021) 345 final.
2 https://elpais.com/economia/2021-03-16/el-gobierno-movilizara-10000-millones-de-los-fondos-europeos-
para-luchar-contra-la-despoblacion-rural.html
3 https://www.abc.es/espana/abci-sanchez-deja-sin-ejecutar-35-por-ciento-fondos-contra-despoblacion-
202205220419_noticia.html#vca=rrss&vmc=abc-es&vso=tw&vli=cm-general&_tcode=cXEycWk1
Answer given by Executive Vice-President Dombrovskis on behalf of the European Commission (13 September 2022)
Social and territorial cohesion is one of the four axes of the Spanish recovery and resilience plan (RRP) and the largest one, accounting for over 50% of investments according to the Recovery and Resilience Scoreboard. Several measures aim to address disparities and unequal opportunities between the more populated urban and declining rural areas.
These include, among others, investments to improve the energy efficiency in buildings in municipalities below 5 000 inhabitants or promoting the deployment of ultra-fast broadband. They also include reforms, among others, to promote sustainable forest management or digitise the agri-food sector.
Some of these measures have already been implemented. For example, in its preliminary assessment of the 2nd payment request by Spain (published on 27 June 2022 (4)), the Commission preliminarily concluded that Spain has satisfactorily fulfilled target #217 (promoting sustainability of tourism) and milestone #345 (regional allocation of funds for territorial projects for vulnerable groups, entrepreneurship & micro-enterprises).
The Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) is a performance-based instrument. Fulfilment of agreed milestones and targets towards achieving the reforms and investments in the plans will unlock regular payment. As such, RRF funds are not disbursed based on costs incurred or the share of budget executed.
All milestones and targets of the 1st and 2nd instalments (92 in total) have been satisfactorily fulfilled by Spain, including those associated with measures aimed at fighting population decline.
Moreover, Article 5 of the RRF Regulation (5) stipulates that the RRF funds cannot, unless in duly justified cases, substitute recurring national budgetary expenditure.
⋅1∙ COM(2021) 345 final.
⋅2∙ https://elpais.com/economia/2021-03-16/el-gobierno-movilizara-10000-millones-de-los-fondos-europeos-para-luchar-contra-la-despoblacion-rural.html
⋅3∙ https://www.abc.es/espana/abci-sanchez-deja-sin-ejecutar-35-por-ciento-fondos-contra-despoblacion-202205220419_noticia.html#vca=rrss&vmc=abc-
es&vso=tw&vli=cm-general&_tcode=cXEycWk1
⋅4∙ Available here: https://ec.europa.eu/info/files/preliminary-assessment-spain_en
⋅5∙ Regulation (EU) 2021/241 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 12 February 2021 establishing the Recovery and Resilience Facility, OJ L 57, 18.2.2021,
p. 17.