The European Commission said on Monday that it has given a positive assessment to Belgium’s fifth payment request under the EU Recovery and Resilience Facility.
This comes just weeks after the Commission approved the country’s fourth instalment.
Once the fifth payment is made, Belgium will have received a total of €3.86 billion from the facility.
This amounts to 73% of the funding allocated to the country’s recovery and resilience plan.
Belgium has so far completed just under 68% of the milestones and targets set out in that plan.
The fifth payment request following the pre-financing Belgium received in 2022 was submitted in mid-April. The country had fallen behind at the start of the disbursement period because its pension reform did not meet EU requirements.
Apart from pre-financing, each country must complete a set of reforms agreed with the EU before further subsidy payments can be released.
For Belgium’s fifth request, measures included efforts to expand the number of low-emission buses.
A reform of Wallonia’s vehicle registration tax was also taken into account.
Time is now running short, with the final payment requests due in September.
