Poland gets EU greenlight for first payment of recovery funds, worth €5.1 billion

The European Commission on Tuesday greenlighted Poland's revised COVID-19 recovery plan, now worth almost €60 billion.

Transcript

00:00 After months of deadlock, the European Commission has given the green light to the first batch

00:06 of Poland's post-pandemic recovery fund, worth 5.1 billion euros.

00:13 Brussels had refused to grant Warsaw access to its so-called recovery and resilience plan

00:17 over persistent concerns that the government's judicial reforms impacting the independence

00:22 of judges.

00:25 But with a new EU-friendly government led by Donald Tusk likely forming soon following

00:30 the elections in October, the European Commission is releasing the funds.

00:34 It was not by chance that when Donald Tusk came to Brussels and he showed the openness,

00:40 the different way of working, and some days after this visit, the talks between the government

00:48 of today and the Commission were closed, were finished.

00:51 So I think that if you ask me, is it the old government, and you are formally the old government,

00:58 I mean still existing government, but politically speaking it's a real influence also of the

01:04 changes and not the change of approach of the Commission, but probably the change of

01:10 approach of the people from the government and from the administration, because they

01:14 know that they will not gain anything blocking or prolonging the debates.

01:21 The recovery and resilience plans for each EU country are designed to kick-start their

01:25 economies following the economic fallout from the pandemic.

01:29 They now include revised plans to slash imports of Russian fossil fuels and accelerate the

01:34 green transition.

01:37 Poland's plan totals nearly 60 billion euros with 34.5 billion in low-interest loans and

01:43 25.3 billion in grants, which will be released in several instalments over the next few years.

01:49 The European Commission had previously linked any release of Polish funds to achieving certain

01:54 milestones aimed at undoing the controversial judicial reforms brought in by the hard-right

01:58 Law and Justice Party.

02:02 And it says this still remains the case.

02:05 But the probable return of Donald Tusk as Polish Prime Minister paves the way for the

02:09 reversal of these changes and dispersal of EU funds.

02:13 [applause]

02:16 (whooshing)