Explaining divergent social RRF spending in Southern Europe: A comparative study of Greece and Italy

Why do member states with similar structural challenges allocate EU recovery funds toward divergent social policy priorities? This article addresses this question through a comparative analysis of social policy spending under the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) in Italy and Greece. Despite comparable positions as major RRF beneficiaries relative to GDP and shared welfare challenges, the two countries exhibit markedly different social investment patterns. Drawing on scholarship on EU governance, Europeanization, and multilevel coordination, we argue that the RRF's hybrid governance architecture—combining supranational conditionality with significant national discretion—generates differentiated policy outcomes shaped by domestic political, fiscal, and institutional configurations. Our analysis demonstrates that social policy allocations emerge from complex negotiations between EU-level frameworks and national political economy dynamics. The findings advance theoretical understanding of how new EU governance instruments interact with domestic contexts to produce variable policy trajectories. We conclude that while the RRF creates unprecedented opportunities for social investment, its transformative potential remains contingent on how national governments mediate between European objectives and domestic constraints—with significant implications for the future of Social Europe and post-pandemic recovery governance.