The vice president of the MEP and the PSD, Paulo Rangel, accuses the Government of “disability, laxity and mismanagement” in the implementation of the Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR), after the President of the Government sent a letter to the President of the European Commission asking for more time to apply the millionaire bazooka. The Executive is eager for the extension beyond 2026 to be a priority for Brussels.

In the document to which the weekly Expresso had access, António Costa justifies the request with the current economic context caused by the war in Ukraine. In his reaction to the document, speaking to the Observer, the Social Democrat MEP Paulo Rangel spares no criticism.

[O envio da carta] it is the confession that the execution of the PRR is not going well. Otherwise, the prime minister would not do this. We know that the PRR itself is very poorly designed. This has a lot to do with the organizational map of the Government, which does not allow good management of funds. It is a sign of failure”, says Paulo Rangel.

The MEP says that, at the moment, the Government “is missing a fundamental opportunity”.

“It is very serious that, knowing from the beginning that the deadlines would be short, the Government was not able to put the organization of the allocation of funds to work in such a capable way that we could maximize the use of the funds. There is no doubt: the government was lax”, to criticize.

Speaking to the Observer, Paulo Rangel recalls, however, that the PSD “always defended” the extension of the deadlines for the implementation of the Recovery and Resilience Plan. “The PSD defends the extension of the term. We think that it was already short at the beginning and, from the moment the Government reveals this incapacity, if we are not fighting for the extension of the term, Portugal will lose”, he warns. And he adds: “We don’t know if the European Commission will accept this extension.”

PS defends itself: “The government’s strategy has not failed”

Already the MEP Margarida Marques reiterates that the request to extend the deadline for the implementation of the Recovery and Resilience Plan has only to do with the economic context caused by the war in Ukraine and therefore rejects the idea of ​​mismanagement by the Government.

It was not the government’s strategy that failed, on the contrary. The Government does not intend to change its strategy. Even when it introduced minor revisions, it wasn’t about changing its strategy: it was just about adapting it to the new reality. This has more to do with timing than design. The strategy did not change in Portugal or in other countries”, explains Margarida Marques.

Speaking to the Observer, the MEP guarantees that “the political concerns and priorities are maintained”. “But there has to be a specification of priorities related to the new challenges posed by the war in Ukraine,” resume.

Margarida Marques believes that the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, will give a positive response to the Portuguese Government’s request to extend the deadlines.

In the letter, the prime minister also suggests a set of priorities for the Brussels business plan. Reforming economic governance and completing missing energy interconnections are two of them.

Listen here to MEPs’ statements to the Observer:

RRP PSD accuses the Government of “inability” in the management of European funds