Just in time before Christmas, on the 23rd of December 2020, the European Parliament and the Council of the EU adopted the REACT-EU initiative that followed the political agreement reached on the 18th of November 2020.
€47.5 billion of the Multiannual Financial Framework 2021-2027 will be made available for Member States through this initiative that aims at supporting a sound recovery through cohesion policies.?The REACT-EU funds will be made available to the current 2014-2020 European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), European Social Fund (ESF) and Fund for European Aid to the Most Deprived (FEAD). Funds will be made available in 2021 (€37.5 billion) and in 2022 (€10 billion). The provisional calculations of the 2021 allocations for each Member State are available here. The €10 billion in 2022 will be distributed on the basis of statistical data available in the autumn of 2021.
Resources may be allocated where they are most urgently needed, there is no breakdown by categories of regions and there exists total flexibility of transfers, between the ERDF and ESF, and towards the FEAD.
EU co-financing rate of up to 100% is possible and there is a retroactive eligibility of expenditure for activities that started on 1 February 2020 and an end date for the eligibility of expenditure on 31 December 2023, in line with the 2014-2020 legislative framework. Member States may allocate 70% of the national envelopes in 2021 based on the socio-economic effects of the crisis. And ex-ante conditionalities, thematic concentration requirements and performance framework do not apply to REACT-EU in order to mobilize funds quickly.
Read the full legislative document (available in all EU languages) here.
