Today, the Commission has endorsed a positive preliminary assessment of Cypruss fourth payment request for €75.9 million under the Recovery and Resilience Facility, the centerpiece of NextGenerationEU.

Following its review of the payment request submitted by Cyprus on December 18, 2024, the Commission has preliminarily concluded that Cyprus has satisfactorily completed the 23 milestones and targets outlined in the Council Implementing Decision for the fifth installment.

The payment request supports 11 reforms and 12 investments that will benefit citizens and businesses in Cyprus. They focus on expanding online government services, enhancing corporate trust through a transparent beneficial ownership registry, and digitalizing healthcare services, especially in a cross-border context. The reforms and investments will also simplify the issuance and transfer of title deeds and implement digital trade solutions to facilitate business transactions.

Key measures in this payment request include:

• A reform to enhance the supervision of Insurance and Pension Funds: Cyprus has taken the first step by developing and implementing a set of tools to enhance the oversight of pension funds and insurance companies.
• An investment to improve the supervisory capacity of the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission: Cyprus has implemented a new digital system to better monitor financial transactions. This new system is directly linked to the European Securities and Markets Authoritys (ESMA) centralized platform.

Next steps

The Commission has now sent its preliminary assessment of Cypruss fulfillment of the milestones and targets required for this payment to the Economic and Financial Committee (EFC), which has four weeks to provide its opinion. The payment to Cyprus can occur following the EFCs opinion and the adoption of a payment decision by the Commission.

Background

The Cypriot recovery and resilience plan includes a wide range of investment and reform measures. The plan will be financed by €1.020 billion in grants and €200 million in loans.

More information on Cypruss Recovery and Resilience plan is available online. It features an interactive map of projects financed by the RRF, as well as the Recovery and Resilience Scoreboard. Additional information about the process of payment requests under the RRF can be found in this Q&A document.