Spain and Portugal are the first EU countries to receive the green light from the European Commission for their Corona development plans.

Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will be traveling to numerous European capitals in the near future to approve the respective national development plans, the commission announced on Tuesday.

This week this also includes Greece, Denmark and Luxembourg.

Germany is therefore not among the first batch of countries with positive reports.

In the national plans, the member states must set out how they want to spend the money they are entitled to from the total of 750 billion euros in the Corona construction fund that the EU decided at the end of last year.

Criticism from the European Parliament

Hendrik Kafsack

Business correspondent in Brussels.

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    To do this, they have to meet certain requirements. 37 percent of the funds must be used for climate protection and 20 percent for digitization. In addition, the states should follow the reform recommendations of the Commission, which it makes them every year as part of the European Semester. However, the EU Commission had made it clear early on that it intended to interpret these requirements rather generously. This had not least led to severe criticism from the European Parliament. For the Greens, the commitment of the states to climate protection does not go far enough. They complain that many of the alleged climate protection expenditures are actually none at all. There is also criticism that countries such as Germany and France only use the funds from the fund to refinance economic stimulus programs that have already been decided.

    Portugal and Spain were among the first to submit their development plans. The deadline for this actually expired at the end of April. However, only a dozen states complied with this, including Germany. There are still no plans in some countries at the moment. Spain is entitled to grants of around 70 billion euros in current prices from the development fund. Portugal is entitled to 14 billion euros, Germany to 26 billion euros. Up to 13 percent of this sum can flow in 2021. All of the money is expected to be spent by 2026.