Bratislava – Slovakia is submitting its sixth payment request from the Recovery and Resilience Plan amounting to 977 million euros. This is the highest request for funds from the European mechanism in history, from which Slovakia is expected to receive a total of 6.4 billion euros. This was announced on Monday (June 30) by the Deputy Prime Minister for the Recovery Plan and Knowledge Economy, Peter Kmec (Hlas-SD), as reported by TASR.
Kmec emphasized that Slovakia is proceeding according to the schedule agreed upon with the European Commission (EC) and has already approved five payment requests. “The sixth, nearly one billion euros, is on the way, and we still have three payment requests ahead of us in the total amount of 6.4 billion euros. We will submit the seventh in the fall of this year, and next year, the final year of the recovery plan, we still have two more, the eighth and ninth payment requests,” Kmec announced.
As part of the sixth request, Slovakia is set to receive nearly one billion euros for meeting 31 milestones and targets, including several partial fulfillments that will be definitively declared in the final ninth payment request. The current request also includes projects to support research, development, innovation, providing scholarships for talented students, and reforming the financing of preschool education. The construction and reconstruction of several hospitals is also ongoing, and the capacities of social service homes are being expanded.
The European Commission typically has two months to assess the request; however, according to him, the entire process will also be affected by the summer break, during which the approval of the sixth payment request will be interrupted for several weeks. By the time it is evaluated sometime in October, alternative deadlines for some milestones and targets that are still “catching up” will also be met, the Deputy Prime Minister anticipates.
“In the fall, we will start preparing very intensively for the seventh payment request, which should be submitted by the end of October,” he announced.
According to him, the challenge will be to close the recovery plan next year, as the deadlines are stricter. Slovakia originally planned to submit the final ninth payment request during the second half of 2026, but the EC wants all milestones and targets to be declared as fulfilled by August 2026. Therefore, much stricter monitoring and oversight of large investment projects that are in progress is also needed. Goals that cannot be achieved by the set deadline will, according to Kmec, be taken into account in one more revision of the recovery plan, which the EC allows in the second half of this year. (July 1)
“The sixth, nearly one billion euros, is on the way, and we still have three payment requests ahead of us in the total amount of 6.4 billion euros. We will submit the seventh in the fall of this year, and next year, the final year of the recovery plan, we still have two more, the eighth and ninth payment requests.” Peter kmec.
