Federal Challenges in the Implementation of the EU’s Recovery and Resilience Facility in Germany

Abstract

The paper focuses on the internal implementation process of the EU Recovery and Resilience Facility in Germany with special regard to the participation of the Länder in the development of the plan and its priorities. The course of the development and implementation process is exemplifying how the blindness of the EU and its treaties for federal systems can be used by national executives to pursue their objectives. The fact that the EU’s Recovery and Resilience Facility and NextGeneration EU were labeled by the EC as a “stimulus package” to combat the (short-term) consequences of Covid-19 made it easier for the German government to develop its own Recovery and Resilience Plan without major consultation. Concerning time constraints, there was no broader public discussion. Since the program and structure of the Recovery and Resilience Facility can also be interpreted as a new structural and cohesion policy approach of the EU, the lack of public discussion is of concern. Following this interpretation, a stronger involvement of the German Länder and municipalities in the negotiation process of the Recovery and Resilience Plan would have been indispensable. The analysis of the implementation of the EU’s Recovery and Resilience Facility in the Federal Republic intends to highlight exemplary aspects of multilevel governance that would need to be strengthened if the EU were to expand its range of economic policy instruments in the future.