The Impact of the RRF in the North – Are baby carrots enough to increase compliance in Germany?

Often Member States do not comply with the recommendations issued by the European Union as part of the European Semester. EU economic governance is rendered ineffective whenever compliance is low (Efstathiou & Wolff 2018). The implementation of the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) might change this by adding an element of enforceability to the Semester. This article seeks to find out what impact the implementation of the RRF has on Member State compliance. To answer this question a comparison of the CSR implementation rates before and after the establishment of the RRF will be conducted. The assessment of the implementation rate will be based on the progress assessment of the European Commission. Secondly, one policy area in the field of labour market reforms, which had no or only limited progress before the establishment of the RRF and has made progress since, will be analysed in depth. This study takes a rationalist perspective on Europeanisation and sees the impact of Europeanisation on the domestic level as a process of distributing resources. The RRF is an additional resource which domestic pro-reform actors can take advantage off to further their agenda. The analysis will focus on if and how domestic pro-reform actors – political parties, members of parliament, and societal organisations (e.g. trade unions and employer associations) – have referred to the RRF or specific CSR during domestic debates. Using process tracing, this paper will compare the compliance rate of Germany in one area of labour policies before and after the implementation of the RRF. Data will be collected via elite interviews and document analysis (policy documents, protocols of parliamentary debates, newspaper coverage). The results of the article will contribute to research around the RRF, specifically by analysing the impact on a Northern EU member state.