Background note on economic recovery and the Recovery and Resilience Facility.
Date: 2024-05-14
Institutions: European Committee of the Regions
Subjects: EU Member State, EU regional policy, community resilience, crisis management, digital transformation, economic recovery, green economy, multi-level governance, reflation, regional and local authorities, support policy

EN

Background note on
economic recovery and the 
Recovery and Resilience Facility

FACTS AND FIGURES  

•  The COVID-19 crisis wrought great damage on the EU and its economy, which led to the 
rapid  adoption  of  an  ambitious recovery  strategy,  with  the  Recovery  and  Resilience  Facility 
(RRF) as its centrepiece. 

•  The RRF aims to provide Member States with more than EUR 700 billion in loans and 
grants to support investments and reforms until 2026 to mitigate the consequences of the crisis, 
strengthen cohesion and resilience, and accelerate the ecological and digital transitions across 
the EU. 

• 

In order to access these funds, each Member State had to prepare a National Recovery and 
Resilience Plan (NRRP) indicating the reforms and public investment projects to be funded by 
the RRF. It is a "performance-based" instrument, with payments made to Member States upon 
achievement of milestones pre-agreed in the NRRPs. 

Source: © European Union, 1995-2023 

 
 
 
 
 
MAIN TERRITORIAL ACHIEVEMENTS AND/OR CHALLENGES 

•  All NRRPs are now approved and, as of early April 2023, around EUR 150 billion of RRF 
grants and loans have been disbursed, which is significant but behind the initial schedule. 

•  Local  and  regional  authorities  (LRAs)  were  at  the  forefront  of  the  fight  against  the 
COVID-19 pandemic and its socio-economic consequences. Furthermore, they undertake the 
majority of public investment which has important consequences for the policy areas covered 
by the recovery plans.  

•  The  final  RRF  regulation  does  have  a  strengthened  focus  on  cohesion  and  recognises  the 
important role of LRAs. However, it does not explicitly mandate their active involvement 
and  participation  in  the  plans.  This  resulted  in  a  top-down  governance,  and  thus  the 
preparation of NRRPs often took place with very limited involvement of cities and regions.  

•  This "territorial blindness" can lead to a misalignment between the plans and the local situation 
and  priorities  on  the  ground,  or  risk  accentuating  pre-existing  territorial  divergences,  thus 
threatening the RRF's ambitious objectives. 

Source: © European Union, 1995-2023 - Six pillars of the RRF 

 
 
 
 
MAIN MESSAGES TO PROMOTE (POLICY DEMANDS) 

The CoR has advocated the following measures to be taken1: 

•  As the implementation of the RRF is underway, LRAs must be allowed to play their full role 

in it if it is to reach its objectives. 

•  The European Commission must ensure that fundamental principles such as  multilevel 
governance and subsidiarity are consistently respected and implemented. In this respect, 
the Commission should provide further information and guidance to Member States on how to 
involve LRAs in their recovery plans, and encourage them to report in detail in their annual 
national  reform  programmes  (NRPs)  the  consultations  they  undertake  with  LRAs  and  other 
stakeholders, in the spirit of Article 18(4)(q) of the RRF Regulation. 

•  The  Commission's  annual  reports  (as  defined  in  Article  31  of  the  Regulation)  and  the 
independent evaluation report to be delivered by 20 February 2024 (as foreseen by Article 32) 
should include a section on LRA involvement, building on the content of the RRF Regulation's 
Recital  34  and  Article  18,  in  order  to  obtain  a  better  overall  view  on  the  implementation 
processes in the EU Member States. 

•  The scoreboard on measuring the progress of implementation of the NRRPs defined in Article 
30 of the Regulation could be further developed to ensure that the "territorial dimension" is 
properly reflected. We need to assure an integrated monitoring process, with the involvement 
of  LRAs  and  an  objective  approach  to  implementation;  though  this  should  not  lead  to  an 
excessive administrative burden for LRAs.  

•  Links between Cohesion Policy and the RRF should be strengthened. 

1

 Adapted from the CoR opinion on Review Report on the Implementation of the Recovery and Resilience Facility, adopted in February 2023. 

 
 
 
 
 
ILLUSTRATION OF HOW THE POLICY WORKS IN PRACTICE 

Austria, Slovakia, Spain 

Examples of RRF-funded projects can be found on the RRF webpage, which contains a map with a brief 
presentation of the projects, focusing on the concrete state of implementation and the next steps. It also 
offers links to more detailed information currently available online. 

Some interesting examples benefiting LRAs include the following: 

Austria 
Construction of new railways and electrification of regional railways 
• With EUR 543 million, the Recovery and Resilience Facility finances the "Koralmbahn", a new 130-
kilometre-long railway line between Styria and Carinthia. 
• It will reduce the travelling time from Graz to Klagenfurt from 3 hours to just 45 minutes, and make 
the journey safer. 
• The construction works are underway and are expected to be completed by the end of 2025. 

Slovakia 
Projects supporting soft tourism in regions of Muránska Planina and Poloniny 
• The investment supports green projects in the national parks of Muránska Planina and Poloniny. 
• Overall, 15 projects from Muránska Planina and 13 projects from Poloniny were selected and are being 
implemented with EUR 17 million worth of Recovery and Resilience Facility financing. 

Spain 
Aid programme for rehabilitation measures at neighbourhood level 
• Aid for renovation measures at district level is one of the five pillars on which the EUR 3.42 million 
integrated residential renovation plan is based on. 
•  Agreements  have  already  been  signed  with  10  Autonomous  Communities  that  will  enable  22  622 
dwellings to be renovated for an amount of EUR 359.5 million. 
• Example: refurbishment of 240 dwellings in the neighbourhood of Otxarkoaga in Bilbao-Vizcaya for 
EUR 6.5 million. 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
© European Union, April 2024

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Picture cover: © rarrarorro - stock.adobe.com

Catalogue number: QG-03-24-050-EN-N 
ISBN: 978-92-895-3308-9 
DOI:10.2863/050539

Created  in  1994,  the  European  Committee  of  the  Regions  is  the  EU's  political 
assem regional and local representatives such as regional presidents or city mayors from 
all 27 Member States, representing over 446 million Europeans.

Edited by the Directorate for Communication of the European Committee of the Regions

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