The latest PromethEUs study explores the digital dimension of the national Resilience and Recovery Plans (RRPs) of the four countries part of the PromethEUs network – Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain. After expounding on the possibilities and challenges of the digital transition of each national RRP, the concluding part adopts a broader perspective and a comparative approach to the 4 plans.
The RRP (grants and loans) funds earmarked for the digital transition by the four southern European countries amount to €81bn, out of a total of €131.5 bn for all Member States. These four southern European countries can count on most of the available resources (61.6%) to bridge the digital divide with the more advanced Member States and improve the lives and productivity of their citizens.
Chapter 1 explores the Greek RRP as a valuable opportunity to narrow the economy’s substantial investment gap and accelerate productivity enhancing reforms. The Greek Recovery and Resilience Plan (RRP) “Greece 2.0” includes a total financing envelope of €30.5bn or 17% of the country’s annual GDP, the largest in terms of percentage in the EU.
Chapter 2 underlines out the importance of the digital dimension in the Italian RRP. Digitisation and innovation of processes, products and services are embodied in almost every policy of the Italian RRP, which amounts to about €191.5bn. The funds will be instrumental in reducing the digital gap between Italy and other European countries in general, promoting greater investment in digital technologies, infrastructure and processes.
Chapter 3 focuses on the Portuguese RRP, which consists of a total budget of €16.6bn, with 22% of the total investment value being allocated to addressing the digital transition. Portugal’s RRP is designed to address some of the country’s most important bottlenecks, such as low productivity and low levels of education, an inefficient public administration and judicial system, towards lasting and sustainable growth, preparing the Portuguese economy for the challenges of the coming years.
Chapter 4 analyses Spain’s RRP. With an amount of up to €69.5bn, and through 212 measures, its aim is towards a “modernisation comparable to that of Spain’s accession to the EU”. The digital transition accounts for 28% of the total of the Spanish RRP and it is present across all levers, programmes and components.
Lastly, after briefly pointing out how some areas of intervention appear to be common across all four plans and identifying some of the regulatory proposals at EU level mostly interwoven with these fields, Chapter 5 focuses on how the four RRPs relate to the other plans of the RRF facility, as well as other funds in the digital field at EU level. The areas of intervention considered in the chapter are connectivity, digital skills, digital transformation of public administrations (also related to data strategy and cloud migration), cybersecurity and Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Please find attached the full publication and its press release.