The establishment of the Recovery and Resilience Fund (RDF) is the European Union’s timely, decisive and proportionate response to the pandemic crisis and the resulting economic downturn. At the same time, TAA represents an important step towards European integration through a form of debt swap. Especially our country is one of the best allocators of TAA resources, which, together with resources from other available funding sources (new NSRF 2021-2027, CAP, etc.), can cover a large gap in public investment.

The government of Kyriakos Mitsotakis quickly developed a national plan “Greece 2.0” which was approved as one of the first TAA plans. Greece 2.0 is a comprehensive plan for the restructuring of the Greek economy after the pandemic. Devoting 37.7% and 23.3% of total resources to green transition and digital transformation, respectively, with one hundred and eight investment actions and programs and sixty-seven reforms, it aims at productive economic transformation, social cohesion, and medium-term strengthening. potential growth. And, of course, TAA contributes to the financing of the real sector of the economy in a difficult period from a financial point of view. Only in the next year and a half, until the end of 2023, financing of the economy in the amount of 6.4 billion euros from the projects of the Greece 2.0 Plan is expected. Today we are in the same, if not more difficult phase of the project implementation, where we have made rapid progress here. Greece is one of thirteen states that have completed the implementation, monitoring and control of the national TAA plan, eight states that have requested payment, and six states that have received the first tranche (the second tranche is expected before the end of the year).

However, maintaining and further increasing the pace of Greece 2.0 implementation will depend on strengthening the system of planning, management and project implementation in our country, as in the coming years we should almost double our rates of use of community resources. To this end, a number of legislative acts are being promoted to simplify procedures in critical sectors (procurement, licensing, territorial planning, government digitalization, etc.), a pool of “mature” projects is being formed for financing, a project maturation mechanism is already in place (with the help of TAIPED), and reforms are being promoted to improve the institutional capacity of project beneficiaries (some of which are funded by TAA).

The National Plan Greece 2.0 is a comprehensive plan for the restructuring of the Greek economy after the pandemic.

Summarizing the above, the first positive assessment of the implementation of the Greece 2.0 Plan, as well as the actions being taken to increase the managerial competence of the beneficiaries of the implemented projects, allow us to be realistically optimistic that Greece 2.0 will eventually meet the expectations of its ambitious design. .

* Mr. Dimitris Skalkos is Secretary General of Public Investment and NSRF at the Ministry of Development and Investment, member of the Greece 2.0 Plan Executive Committee.