The European Union will give Macedonia financial support to manage the energy crisis, with the first tranche worth EUR 80 million to be available as of January 2023, said Prime Minister Dimitar Kovacevski at today’s joint press conference with the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen.

The first tranche of aid is 80 million euros, a grant that will be used for budget support in the country until the end of the year. In the next two months, all the formalities will be done and already as of January, we will be able to withdraw the funds for budget support. This means that those financial resources in the most difficult months, January, February, March, can be used to deal with the energy crisis, i.e. for purposes that the budget will foresee with the budget for 2023, which will soon be approved by the Government and will enter in the Parliament, pointed out Prime Minister Kovacevski.

The Prime Minister emphasized that this will not be the only aid, but new regional aid is already being considered for financing capital projects for gas connection and for providing new sources of electricity supply. Here, he said, Kovacevski is primarily referring to large projects that are planned in the region for the construction of gas plants and other energy plants to stabilize the production of electricity in the entire region of the Western Balkans.