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The Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF), the core of 
's recovery fund, enters the implementation phase now. @onethuthree has the overview of it all until 2026. But what can we expect in the next months?
A short preview:
's recovery fund, enters the implementation phase now. @onethuthree has the overview of it all until 2026. But what can we expect in the next months?A short preview:
1/ Member states will have to submit their final recovery and resilience plans (RRPs) by the end of April. The @EU_Commission then has two months to formally assess the RRPs and to make a recommendation to the Council for an implementing decision.
3/ We can assume that countries will submit RRPs for the full volume of their respective allocation. The COM will assess the plans based on a fairly fine-grained methodology, see Annex II in the legal text in the link.
https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-14310-2020-INIT/en/pdf
https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-14310-2020-INIT/en/pdf
2/ The Commission then has only three options: It can endorse the RRP and recommend granting the full amount allocated to the member state; it can endorse the RRP and recommend less funds if it does not buy the member states's cost calculation; or it can reject the plan.
3/ It does not have the option of throwing out individual measures once they are in the final plan - its only two threats are to kill plans altogether or to reduce amounts with good arguments. In practice, this will mean all plans will be agreed prior to final submission.
4/ That is why the coming weeks in the runup to the end-April deadline will be the ones deciding how the RRF money will be spent. The action is still largely at national level on assembling plans (
) but will shift soon to the bilateral negotiations between MS and COM.
) but will shift soon to the bilateral negotiations between MS and COM.
5/ The fact that the EP did in the end not get a formal role in approving RRPs and past experience with (lack of) Council peer review means that these interactions will likely stay bilateral - and risk happening mostly behind scenes. And by end-April, it will be over.
6/ It would be good for the Commission to take a public stance on some of the draft plans early on and to make clear that it will look at all plans carefully - also the ones from MS like 
. It should also not shy away from picking fights where it has to - and do so in public.
. It should also not shy away from picking fights where it has to - and do so in public.
7/ There is one shot to get these plans right and to start this new era of EU economic governance with earning credibility for the process. Whether the RRF can be the foundation for a future fiscal capacity will depend largely on achieving that goal.
8/ What happens then? Once the plans are approved by the Council, countries can start implementing (or might have already done so as measures as of Feb 2020 are eligible). They also get up to 13% of their allocation as pre-financing right away. So in July or so, money will flow.
9/ So to sum up: In the next ten weeks or so, the allocation of more than 300 bn euros will be decided basically for good in a process that is by-and-large untested. A lot depends on getting it right. So it might make sense to pay close attention...
