The COVID-19 pandemic and institutional change in the EU’s financial assistance regime: the governance of the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF)

ABSTRACT

This article aims at explaining the establishment of the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) around a new governance system of EU financial assistance in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Through a process tracing analysis and semi-structured elite interviews, the paper shows that between the pandemic outbreak and the adoption of the RRF, an ‘ideational change’ occurred about the financial assistance regime in the EU. Such an ideational change consists in two concomitant phases – a first phase of ‘ideational collapse’ of the existing governance mode (i.e. intergovernmental coordination as per the ESM) and a subsequent phase of ‘ideational consolidation’ around a new governance mechanism (i.e. limited supranational delegation as exemplified by the RRF). Based on the specific case study of the RRF, the paper discusses implications for how institutional change in the EU may take place following an exogenous shock and the relative explanatory power of ideas in determining the final form of institutional change.

KEYWORDS:

• Ideational change
• political entrepreneurs
• policy entrepreneurs
• Recovery and Resilience Facility
• COVID-19 pandemic
• financial assistance regime

Acknowledgement

The author is grateful to all the EU and national government officials who kindly agreed to share their first-hand insights into the negotiations for the establishment of the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) and Next-Generation EU (NGEU) and to the three anonymous referees for their comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Typescript memo dated 2 April 2020, entitled: Für eine starke gemeinsame europäische Antwort auf die wirtschaftichen Herausforderungen der Corona-Krise. Available at: https://www.politico.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/EU_Corona_Massnahmenpapier-31.3.2020.pdf?utm_source=POLITICO.EU&utm_campaign=f370af3e0c-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_04_02_05_10&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_10959edeb5-f370af3e0c-189860241.

2. Diplomatic adviser to Michel, replaced François Roux as Michel’s head of cabinet starting 12 June 2020.

3. Secretary-General of the Council of the European Union.

4. Deputy Director-General for General and Institutional Policy at the Council of the European Union.

5. https://twitter.com/sebastiankurz/status/1280880213317111809.

6. https://twitter.com/BarendLeyts/status/1284174161951313927.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by REGROUP (Rebuilding Governance and Resilience Out of the Pandemic), a European Union’s Horizon Europe project under Grant Agreement No. 101060825.