Slovenia gets first wedge of Covid recovery cash from EU

Slovenia received its first €231 million fund payment from the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) of the European Commission (EC) on Friday. The transfer equates to 13% of the country’s total RRF allocation. The Western Balkan EU member will receive €2.5 billion in total – €1.8 billion in grants and €705 million in loans – which it has earmarked to kick-start investment and reform measures, as outlined in its recovery and resilience plan.

The Slovenian government will spend €230 million on renovation programmes to increase the energy efficiency of public buildings, including schools. It will also support transport decarbonisation by investing €292 million in railway infrastructure. Slovenia has earmarked €114 million for the improvement of digital literacy in education and life-long learning. It will also channel €83 million towards the digital transformation of the health sector. The government will similarly modernise the healthcare and pension systems to the tune of €110 million, which will go towards new medical facilities and equipment, including the renovation of two hospitals for infectious diseases in Ljubljana and Maribor.

The disbursement was made possible after the EU recently successfully borrowed from the markets under its NextGenerationEU operation. The EC plans to raise up to a total of €80 billion in long-term funding, complemented by short-term EU-Bills, by the end of 2021. The EU will disburse €723.8 billion to member states overall via the RRF: €385.8 billion in loans, and €338 billion in grants.