A comparative analysis of the formulation of National Recovery and Resilience Plans: domestic politics and ‘usages’ of Europe

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic fallout, the European Union (EU) adopted the ‘Next Generation EU’ funding programme, the centrepiece of which was the Recovery and Resilience Facility to support economic reforms and investments in EU countries. In order to access this funding, EU member states had to submit National Recovery and Resilience Plans (NRRPs). The national authorities prepared these plans in consultation with the European Commission. This paper examines the domestic political-economy factors that have affected the formulation of the NRRPs in the four largest member states of the EU. It focuses on the reforms included in the NRRPs, rather than the investments. Three features of the reforms are of particular interest: their intensity and scope (e.g. number, domains, targets and milestones); their timing (i.e. frontloading or backloading); and the extent to which they incorporate Countries-Specific Recommendations previously adopted by the EU. In those respects, Italy and Germany stand in stark contrast, whereas Italy used ‘Europe’ as a sort of ‘external constraint’ to seek to bring about several deep domestic reforms, Germany went for a rather ‘minimalist option. The Spanish case bears some resemblance to the Italian one, whereas the French case shares some similarities with the German case. We argue that this variation is primarily explained by the domestic politics of the formulation of NRRPs and, in particular, by the different domestic usages of Europe. The paper engages in a structured focused comparison as well as within-case process tracing of the selected case studies. Besides being intrinsically important, these countries were chosen because they feature different economic and political institutions, which allow us to apply a most-different-systems design approach.