Latvia's national recovery plan looks fairly good in comparison with other countries' plans - Dombrovskis

  • 2021-06-22
  • LETA/TBT Staff

RIGA - Latvia's national plan for the absorption of funding from the European Union's (EU) Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) looks fairly good in comparison with the plans submitted by other EU member states, European Commission Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis told LETA. 

The European Commission has given a positive assessment of Latvia's national RRF plan, which has yet to be approved by the Council of the EU. 

"The assessment is generally positive on how the plan will promote the green and digital transformation, structural reforms, as well as the development of the social sphere and human capital," Dombrovskis said.  

The EU commissioner indicated that the conditions for the absorption of RRF funds are the same for all member states. First of all, they apply to the green and digital transformation and stipulate that 37 percent of the funding have to be spent on the green transformation and 20 percent on the digital transformation. 

"The expenditures envisaged in Latvia's plan exceed these two targets only slightly. There are countries that put a greater emphasis on the green transformation. As for the implementation of the country-specific reform recommendations, I must say that Latvia's plan is quite ambitious in comparison with many other countries' plans. A rather big emphasis is on the social sphere and human capital. So compared to the plans of other countries, Latvia's plan looks fairly good," Dombrovskis said. 

Commenting criticism that Latvia's RRF plan focuses too much on investments in infrastructure and construction-related projects and pays too little attention to people and skills, Dombrovskis said that the plan actually devotes sufficient resources to the development of skills, for instance, in relation to Latvia's higher education reform and  the promotion of private investment in research and industry, as well as in relation to digital skills.