Focus

Bruxelles, 27 febbraio 2022

As the war in Ukraine rages on, and Ukrainians fight bravely for their country, the European Union steps up once more its support for Ukraine and the sanctions against the aggressor – Putin's Russia.

For the first time ever, the European Union will finance the purchase and delivery of weapons and other equipment to a country that is under attack.

This is a watershed moment.

Bruxelles, 28 febbraio 2021

Summary

Positive preliminary assessment of the satisfactory fulfilment of milestones and targets related to the first payment request of 30 December 2021 submitted by Italy transmitted to the Economic and Financial Committee by the European Commission.

In accordance with Article 24 (paragraph 2) of Regulation (EU) 2021/241, on 30 of December 2021, Italy submitted a request for payment for the first instalment of the non-repayable support and the first instalment of the loan support. The payment request was accompanied by the required management declaration and summary of audits.

To support its payment request, Italy provided due justification of the satisfactory fulfilment ofthe 29 milestones and targets of the firstinstalment of the non-repayable support and the 22 milestones of the first instalment of the loan support, as set out in Section 2(1)(1.1) and Section 2(2)(2.1) of the Council Implementing Decision of 13 July 2021 the approval of the assessment of the recovery and resilience plan for Italy.

For 2 targets covering a large number of beneficiaries, in addition to the summary documents and official listings provided by Italy, Commission services have assessed a statistically significant sample of individual files. The sample size has been uniformly set at 60, which corresponds to a confidence level of 95% or above in all cases.

Upon receipt of the payment request, the Commission has assessed on a preliminary basis the satisfactory fulfilment of the relevant milestones and targets. Based on the information provided by Italy, the Commission has made a positive preliminary assessment of the satisfactory fulfilment of all 51 milestones and targets.

The milestones and targets positivelyassessedas part of this payment request demonstrate significant steps in the implementation of Italy’srecovery and resilience plan. This includes, among others, the reforms of the justice system, concerning civil and criminal proceedings, as well as insolvency, and reforms of the education system. Further areas of intervention cover the reform of public procurement and the adoption of measuresto improve the effectiveness of spending review and to fight tax evasion. The milestones and targets also confirm progress towards the completion of investment projects related to digitization of the production system, the energy efficiency requalification of private and public buildings, the fostering of administrative capacity, and the support to SMEs especially in the tourism sector.