APA – The countries of the European Union (EU) will invest at least 200 billion euros in green projects when they help the economies recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Friday, APA reports citing Xinhua.
The EU’s executive chief has just concluded her first leg of a tour of the 27 member states, endorsing their plans to spend the recovery fund for greener and more digital growth.
With 24 national plans submitted and 12 of them approved by the European Commission, von der Leyen said all plans exceed the target of investing at least 20 percent of the allocated resources in the digital field and 37 percent in the green transition.
“At least they meet it, if not a lot of them overshoot it, and that is good. So we will have an investment of at least 200 billion euros in green measures — just to name a few topics,” she told reporters after a summit of the EU leaders on Friday.
The EU is ready to mobilize 750 billion euros on behalf of the 27 member states for a historic recovery package, known as NextGenerationEU, and it started raising funds on the financial markets last week.
“We have raised 20 billion euros with a maturity of ten years. And it was seven times oversubscribed, which shows the trust and the confidence of the market in NextGenerationEU and the European Union,” von der Leyen declared.
