Authors: Athanasios Kolliopoulos

Title: Drafting national recovery plans: Long term commitments without a stakeholder involvement?

Abstract

The €672.5 bn Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) is the main component of the EU’s ‘Next Generation EU’ recovery plan from the coronavirus crisis. In order to benefit from the RRF, member states should submit their draft recovery and resilience plans outlining national investment and reform agendas in line with the EU policy criteria. Countries can therefore potentially give a say to citizens on how EU recovery funds are spent and on the long-term reforms that are being designed; along with technical evaluations invoking economic principles. This diverges from economic “strictness’’ financial assistance conditionality, due to which the EU’s economic crisis has generated a crisis of democratic legitimacy. However, drafting national recovery plans is a laborious exercise, bringing back the question of whether the relationship between input and output legitimacy is one of synergy or trade-off.