The Recovery and Resilience Facility

This Policy Brief analyses to what extent the funds distributed through the EU’s Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) are used by Member States to finance new projects, thus boosting their economic recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic, which is the primary goal of the RRF. Specifically, this Policy Brief provides an in-depth analysis of the National Recovery Resilience Plans submitted by Austria, Belgium, Germany, Spain, Italy and Portugal. Overall, the analysis shows that there is no significant relationship between the total amount of RRF grants (in terms of the percentage of GDP) and an acceleration in public investment. This suggests that RRF funds are mainly being used to finance existing investment projects.