The EU institutions' role in the formulation of the NextGenerationEU recovery plan

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic shook the whole world and left unprecedented damage on the economies of the Member States. Member States had to react quickly to safeguard the lives of its citizens and the economies of their country. On the other hand, the European Union (EU) had to come up with a recovery plan to get its Member States back on their feet in order to safeguard the European economies. This is why in 2020, the European Commission launched the NextGenerationEU (NGEU) recovery plan which aims to bring back to life the economies of its Member States. The NGEU is based on three main pillars, these are the need to make the EU greener, the promotion of digitalisation, and social and economic resilience. To be able to coordinate this recovery plan, the help and contribution of all EU institutions was needed to ensure that no element is left behind. Therefore, the main objective of this study is to analyse the role of the EU institutions with regards to the formulation of the NGEU. This will be done by looking at the main EU institutions to understand the role which they have in policy formulation and then link them to the NGEU. This dissertation will start by evaluating the main institutions of the EU which are the European Commission, European Council and European Parliament and the way they approach the plan. In order to evaluate the different opinions which existed over the plan, the National Recovery and Resilience Plans (NRRP) of the Member States will also be analysed. This will be important to understand the priorities established by the Member States and on what they will be focusing. In this regard, the EU institutions contribution will be analysed by looking at whether or not the institutions remained consistent when approving the NRRPs.