The "Nord 2020" program has 3.4 billion euros for public investment

The reprogramming of North 2020, which provides for the "misappropriation" of funds from "financial instruments" intended for public investment, was approved today by the program's monitoring committee at the time of writing. a meeting held at Esposende

. The Nord 2020 Regional Operational Program, Fernando Freire de Sousa, the reprogramming proposal will be followed by the European Commission next week.

Freire de Sousa, who is also Chair of the Coordination Commission and (CCDR-N), explained that the objectives of reprogramming are to "make the various" shooters "of the program more efficient and to respond to the changes in the government's strategy.

"Northern Europe has a total financial volume of 3.4 billion euros," he said, pointing out that "it is mostly the fact that it has been noted that the heading "financial instruments" is oversized, with an allocation of more than 700 million euros, but which has been committed so far only about 115 million euros.

An oversizing that had to do with the crisis that Portugal was experiencing in 2011 when the North was being planned.

Freire de Sousa pointed out at the time that financial instruments "were very important because the banks were repressed and unable to grant credit and because the interest rates were very high, at least in comparison with Europe. "

The situation has changed, however, and it turns out today that cash for" financial instruments "will be more useful"

"In practice, this means that There are 500 and something in the millions that are more in this category and that can be used more intelligently, more effectively and more strategically affect as well as other areas such as territorial investment, l & rsquo; Equipment, education, social facilities, sparsely populated areas, "said Freire de Sousa

With regard to business support, the program

Today 39. With the approval of reprogramming by the Monitoring Committee, the "last stage" of the process has been completed with regard to the national entities [19659002] The proposal follows next week for Brussels, and the European Commission should deliver its final verdict October

Of the total budget of 3.4 billion euros, the 2020 North has already "compromised" 54%

"It is the money that is intended, contracted. It is now up to the promoters to put this contractualization into practice to make progress with the investments, "said Freire de Sousa