The European COVID-19 Recovery Plan

With a total volume of 1,824.3 billion €, the COVID-19 European Recovery Plan includes the 750 billion € NextGenerationEU (NGEU) temporary recovery package – the most important instrument of which is the 672.5 billion € Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) – and the 1,074.3 billion € Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) 2021-2027.

While the spending structure of the MFF has only been moderately modernised, the NGEU and especially the RRF are explicitly future-oriented: 37 percent of RRF funds are to be used for climate protection, 20 percent for digital transformation.

New own resources are to support important European policies in the future: a plastic-based own resource is added to the existing own resources used to finance the MFF as of 2021. A digital tax, an own resource based on the EU Emissions Trading Scheme and a carbon border adjustment mechanism, among others, whose implementation is envisaged for 2023, are to contribute to the repayment of the debt taken on for NGEU.

"NextGenerationEU holds great potential to strengthen cohesion in the EU as well as to strengthen the European added value in crisis management. The implementation in terms of future-oriented use of funds and the implementation of new own resources could become an important challenge for the Union",  said Julia Bachtrögler-Unger, Margit Schratzenstaller and Franz Sinabell.