Minister says Slovenia on pace in drafting recovery plan

Brussels, – Finance Minister Andrej Šircelj said Slovenia was in constant touch with the European Commission in drafting its recovery plan and would meet the deadline. He said he would like to see as little red tape as possible while declining to announce when the plan will be in Brussels, saying that “this is not a competition.”

The legislation that serves as basis for the European mechanism for recovery and resilience will enter into force, and as of then member states may officially send their national plans to the European Commission.

They are expected to do so by the end of April, and this was one of the topics of Tuesday’s informal videoconference of the EU finance ministers, which Šircelj attended.

The minister told reporters that Slovenia was in constant touch with the European Commission, and that it had exchanged various working drafts, about which there had been much talk and criticism in Slovenia.

He added that the plan was a work in progress and would be finalised by the deadline, and that all instructions from the European Commission would be considered.

“We would not like to see too much red tape … that could delay implementation of such plans,” Šircelj said, adding that plans should be adopted as soon as possible and their implementation could be then assessed on the fly or retroactively.

Asked when Slovenia will send the plan to Brussels, the minister said he could not predict that, noting that “this is not a competition, this is not the Olympic Games.”

Šircelj noted that Slovenia was among the first member states to ratify the Own Resources Decision as the legal basis for borrowing on financial markets to finance recovery.

As for the confidentiality of the national plan, the minister said that the document first needed to be coordinated between ministries, and that its wording needed to be finalised at the expert level “in peace and without the public.”

According to him, the government is not hiding anything, and when the ministries harmonise all projects, the document will become public. He could not say when the plan will be publicly revealed.

The post Minister says Slovenia on pace in drafting recovery plan appeared first on Slovenia Times.