Richard Rasi of the extra-parliamentary Hlas-SD party warned on Wednesday that Slovakia has a backlog of almost €5.5 billion in terms of unspent EU funds. Rasi added that the country will have to draw €20 million per day for the remainder of the year, including weekend days and holidays, if it wants to draw the entire sum. He also calculated that the €5.49 billion could be used to build three university hospitals, each worth €500 million, and 80 district hospitals, each worth €50 million.
Renovations of hospitals as well as the building of the new hospital in Bratislava should be funded from the national recovery plan. Contracts for renovations and the construction plans for the new hospital are considerably delayed, though. The delay in the national recovery-plan project for a new hospital in Bratislava is a big one - at least nine to eighteen months, Health Ministry State Secretary Michal Palkovic, who has been entrusted with taking charge of the ministry, reported on Wednesday. For Palkovic the most important thing at the moment is to reduce any time deficit that has arisen to an absolute minimum and to complete the documentation. The state secretary noted that the tenders were originally expected to be launched in late 2023, not ruling out that a parallel procurement process might be launched earlier.
According to interim Prime Minister Eduard Heger, individual ministries have declared that they will manage to draw all EU funds from the previous programming period and not a single euro from these funds will be wasted. The premier stressed that although a great deal of money from EU funds is waiting to be spent at the moment, the contracting process is running at a fast pace and has even exceeded 100 percent at a number of ministries. According to Heger, previous governments are to blame for the fact that the country has not completely drawn EU funds from the 2014-2020 programming period.
Source: TASR
