Mr. Tony Murphy:

A novelty in our annual report this year and one that will become more and more important at least over the next three or four years is the Recovery and Resilience Facility, RRF. This is part of NextGeneration EU, which has a budget of €750 billion. The RRF is €672.5 billion. Because of the different delivery mechanism compared to the multi-annual financial framework, MFF, expenditure, we will issue a separate opinion on the legality and regularity of the spending under this facility.

We have a specific chapter in our annual report - chapter 10. We issued a clean opinion on the RRF related to one payment to Spain for €11.5 billion in December. The payment was made in respect of the achievement of 52 milestones. In disagreement with the Commission, we considered that one of these milestones relating to corporate income tax reform was not satisfactorily fulfilled. One of the issues we have with this facility is that it offers insufficient criteria for the milestone. Basically, if the milestone is not clearly defined, then the assessment by the Commission as to whether it is fulfilled can lead to different interpretations between us and them. Finally, there are some weaknesses in relation to----