Covid-19 National Recovery and Resilience Plans: A Tale of Many Europes?

• In Event: European Politics and Society Virtual Poster Session

Abstract

The debate on heterogeneity and diversity within the EU long precedes the pandemic, taking center stage in the context of the many crises faced by the Union in the latest years. Divisions range from the struggle with Central European Member States over the rule of law and fundamental values, recently threatening the approval of the multiannual budget of the Union to the years of struggle over migration and asylum along the same geographical fault lines. On the economic front the core-periphery divide has taken center stage in the Great Recession and Eurozone crisis, followed by contestation and discontent over the prevailing austerity paradigm. The social cost of the crisis in the Southern Member States has wrecked popular support and bread Euroscepticism even within Member States such as Italy traditionally among the top supporters of integration. On such premises the divide has been marked in the reform debate on how to complete the Economic Monetary Union (EMU) across risk-sharing and solidarity mechanisms or risk-reduction, which antecedes the Covid-19 outbreak but has come to the forefront of the public and policy debate as the governance limits highlighted by the pandemic has forced compromise on emergency measures such as SURE and Next Generation EU (NGEU). The latter were not reached without a fight carried on for months over national interests and priorities on the scale and (temporary) nature of the plan, especially along the mix between loans and grants. At the same time, much easier consensus came in the conditionality of the plans to joint priorities along the broad framework of greening, digitising and rendering more resilient and inclusive the Continent’s economies and societies. Beyond the agreement on priorities and the need for a supranational greenlight the NGEU national recovery and resilience plans (NRRPs) remain a national business both in defining the projects to include and in their implementation. Against the background of heterogeneous national priorities, values and capabilities the policy debate has turned to putting into question the ability of all countries to deliver on putting the NGEU unprecedented opportunity to good use in promoting investments effective in equipping their countries with the needed physical and intangible infrastructure to thrive in the post-Covid reconstruction. At the same time, the success of the project carries extensive implication for the long term governance reform of the Union, and especially the Eurozone, whose incompleteness comes at the high cost of limited fiscal powers both at national and supranational level to fend off crisis time and effectively orient toward long term priorities within the Euro Area.. Given the reform debate around the upcoming Conference on the Future of Europe, high stakes lie in the success of NGEU and the NRRPs across the EU Member States. Against this background the paper assesses national plans in uncovering how well they accomplish the prioritisation commonly agreed by the political European Council agreement greenlighting the plan and how they match the underlying vision for the future of the Continent embodied by the supranational guidelines within the project. At the same time, the paper aims to uncover the “different Europes” revealed by national preferences as captured by the plans and situate them against the background of diverging geographical position on values and policies. Is there a north-south and\or west-east divide on the prioritisation of digitalisation and progress towards environmental goals? Does gender mainstreaming and - for example - the inclusion of marginalised and vulnerable groups such as youth, low-skilled workers and those from a migrant background find a similar place in the NRRPs along the Member States? Which are the most salient issues in each country and what commonalities and differences emerge across geographical clusters? The paper addresses these interrogatives through a mixed methods approach combining a EU27 wide quantitative analysis with an in-depth qualitative comparative analysis of selected representative case studies across core, (southern) periphery and CEE Member States. On the first account the methodological approach centers around quantitative text analysis of the 27 NRRPs characterising the plans priorities by way of structural topic models. Alongside the case studies aim to provide a richer understanding of how the plans fit against the background of pre-existing cleavages and socio-economic differences across the continent. As a result the analysis aims to provide an early understanding on the future of Europe and the extent to which NGEU may prove successful in orienting the reconstruction effort toward common goals and the extent to which divisions and divergences remain at the forefront. On such basis the contribution draws broader valuable insight on the implication for the reform debate at play surrounding the future of EU governance and institutions.

Authors

• Matilde Ceron, University of Milan

• Carlo Maria Palermo