Nationalisation of European Union Regional policies, COVID 19's short term effect or a long term trend?

The European Union has suffered together with the rest of the world COVID 19 healthcare crisis, along with it there is an economic and social crisis. The European Union’s response to this crisis took different forms. Amongst others strengthening the implementation of the European Single Market when it was challenged and with a set of proposals that were to finance short and long-term effects of the pandemic. The first set of measures, the short term ones, were called CRI (Coronavirus Response Initiative) and CRI+ (Coronavirus Response Initiative plus), on both cases they were regulatory and financial measures, changing the way that ESIF (European structural and investment funds) have till that moment being managed, at a regional level changing its governance to a national level. Later measures such as the Recovery Package have used to instruments the form of regional funds and national recovery programmes. Both proposals tend towards a process of harmonisation and nationalisation of European Union policies, challenging previous approach. Regional policies were born as to help regions converge towards a common standard of economic development. The design of those policies took account of the differences of the regions in the European continent and challenged the differentiated integration on economic policies helping territories achieve those standards. This paper is an ongoing work as to whether COVID 19, is changing the multilevel governance system that has been the norm for the running of the regional and other funds, into a more centralised way of managing the funds.