Mr. Tony Murphy:

There are a number of reasons. First, the terms were devised at a different time almost. It was before the war and things have changed. The milestones in the original plans are just not achievable anymore. There has been some renegotiation of plans. Then there was the RePowerEU chapter, which was added to the different plans, linked to the energy crisis. The original idea was a very simple plan - do all this and get all this money. Things have just evolved. We have seen what happens in some member states where the government might change and their priorities might not be in line with the priorities outlined in the plan for the member states. There is not a simple answer. It is a whole combination of factors which have complicated it.

The original idea was to give the money upfront to basically encourage member states, particularly big member states that have not been implementing structural reforms for years such as Italy and Spain. They were not doing it through the European semester process. Basically, this was a carrot to provide money not linked to cost. This is the big difference for us and why it is difficult to audit. They do not incur costs and then get the money back. They get the money upfront and spend the money further down the line and it is not directly linked. This was the second year of RRF. In the first year there was only one payment to Spain. It got €11.5 billion for 52 reforms. There were no costs involved in that.