National plans should allocate at least 37% of the budget to climate and biodiversity and a further 20% to digital measures. The rules prohibit the funding of measures that cause significant harm to the environment (the do no significant harm principle).
How it will work
In order to receive support, member states must prepare recovery and resilience plans proposing a set of reforms and public investment projects that could be implemented by 2026. These plans will be integrated into the European Semester cycle of economic coordination and should be submitted by 30 April.
The Commission will assess the plans and make a proposal to the Council about the amounts of grants and loans to each country and the targets and milestones to be achieved. The Council then has to adopt the plans.
National measures taken in relation to the Covid-19 crisis since February 2020 are also eligible for support.
Payments will be made once the milestones and the targets are reached by the member states, but countries can request pre-financing of up to 13% of the total amount, which will be paid once their plan is adopted by the Council.
Member states will report on the progress achieved twice a year within the European Semester framework.
Democratic legitimacy
In the negotiations, Parliament pushed for more transparency. Under the agreement with the Council, the Commission will send all information concerning the national plans and its proposals for Council’s decisions simultaneously to both Parliament and the Council.
Every two months, the Commission may be invited by parliamentary committees to discuss the state of the EU recovery and the progress by member states towards their targets.
The Commission is also required to prepare annual reports on the implementation of the instrument and other evaluation reports.
Siegfried Mureşan (EPP, Romania), one of the lead MEPs on this, welcomed the involvement of Parliament in all stages of the process. “This is good news,” he said. “The Recovery and Resilience Facility will have full democratic legitimacy.”
Find out what the EU is doing to support the economic recovery.
