Negotiating and Implementing the Recovery and Resilience Facility: Coordinative Europeanization and EU Conditionality

This paper analyses the design and negotiations of the National Recovery and Resilience Plans (NRRPs) which the EU member states were required to formulate to access the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF). By analysing three Eurozone members (Austria, Greece, and Slovakia) which represent distinct voices and experiences within the EU integration project, we argue that a new form of conditionality can be identified. While RRF conditionality has many features of previous forms of EU conditionality, it is also unique and characterised by early coordination between the EU and the member states; informal channels of communication alongside formal negotiations; and a heightened salience of national ownership. It is argued that RRF conditionality is an exemplar case of coordinative Europeanization. While evidence of coordinative Europeanization can be found during the design and negotiation of their NRRPs in all three cases, the intensity of the different aspects is mediated by the credibility of a given member state.