Leszek Szymański/PAP
The ruling party leader has expressed his conviction that Poland has a chance to record an EU average economic growth by the end of the current decade. Finally, we have a chance to achieve an EU average GDP increase by the end of this decade, Jarosław Kaczyński, the leader of the ruling Law and Justice (PiS), told the Wprost.pl portal on Sunday.
Admitting that the Covid-19 pandemic proved to be a huge disaster, which cost the lives of over 100,000 people in Poland, Kaczyński said that the New Deal was an opportunity to rebuild the Polish economy, thanks to EU funds and a growing Polish budget.
The European Commission is urging the 27 member states to speed up the ratification process of the EU s €750 billion recovery fund, as debate on the issue drags on in several countries and the summer deadline approaches. Time is of (the) essence, Johannes Hahn, European Commissioner for Budget, said on Wednesday morning. Let us not waste this time.
Hahn underlined that the Commission is ready to go to the financial markets by June in order to raise the money for the fund, also known as Next Generation EU, and distribute it among member states.
But a procedural step is hampering the fund s roll-out: as of today, only 17 out of 27 member states have ratified the Own Resources Decision, the legislative instrument that enables the Commission to borrow the cash and repay it over the next decades.
0 >From left, Lithuanian president Gitanas Nausėda, Latvian prime minister Krišjanis Karinš and former Estonian prime minister Jüri Ratas at an EU meeting last July. Source: EU press office
A dispute between the European Parliament and Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which threatened progress on the Rail Baltica project, has been resolved.
The dispute had seen the three Baltic States threaten to block the approval of ta €750-billion EU package aimed at mitigating the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, unless money was forthcoming for the planned high speed rail link, which will run through the three Baltic States, with its northern terminal in Tallinn, cutting transport times between those countries and continental Europe.
| UPDATED: 17:06, Thu, Mar 11, 2021
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The furious capitals threatened to plunge the EU budget’s so-called conditionality mechanism into crisis with their challenge at the European Court of Justice. Budapest and Warsaw are concerned the European Parliament and Council will be able to use the measure to prevent them from accessing cash from the bloc’s €1.8 trillion budget and coronavirus recovery fund. Under the deal struck by EU leaders last year, the ECJ must first rule on whether the mechanism is acceptable under the bloc’s treaties.