Payments under NGEU and its centrepiece – the RRF – total €333.7 billion so far. The increase in RRF payments since 25 September 2024 amounts to €2.2 billion as a result of disbursements to Greece, Cyprus, Slovenia and Slovakia. The assessment of further payment requests from 12 countries is ongoing. In the RRF annual report of October 2024, the Commission concluded that RRF implementation had accelerated, expecting additional payments worth more than €30 billion by the end of the year. Member States have received 41.4 % of the EU resources allocated to their recovery plans, but part of these resources has not yet been spent. One reason is the performance-based design of the RRF that supports both reform and investment measures, often frontloading the former to increase the impact of the latter. In June 2024, for example, Italy had spent around half of the €102.5 billion received. The time lag between EU disbursements and implementation of multiannual investment means that the impact of investment is projected to increase in the final 2 years of the RRF. In 2025, the Commission expects the RRF and other EU funds to mitigate the adverse effects of fiscal consolidation and support public investment in the EU, warning that delays in RRF implementation could dampen economic activity.
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