The European Commission has approved Germany’s first EUR 4bn payment request for grants under its NGEU programme, with senior EU officials saying the payment had already been accounted for in Germany’s 2023 budget.

Germany will receive a further EUR14bn in 2024 when it is due to make its second and third payment requests, and the total NGEU financial envelope for Germany will be over EUR30bn once it has added a REPowerEU Chapter. Including this EUR 4bn, Germany has now received around EUR6bn when pre-financing of EUR2.25bn from 2021 is included.

EU officials said that it was impossible for them to say if the amounts announced today could be used to “fill the gap” left by the recent Karlsruhe court decision, but said there could be some overlap between the measures in the German plan and those to be financed domestically next year, including climate measures financed by Germany’s Transformation Fund. Germany’s plan includes a large green and digital transformation element, of 47% and 48% respectively.