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13
Working Paper 2021.13
From the European
Semester to the
Recovery and
Resilience Facility
Some social actors are (not)
resurfacing
Bart Vanhercke and Amy Verdun
With Angelina Atanasova, Slavina
Spasova and Malcolm Thomson
European
Trade Union Institute
Bd du Roi Albert II, 5
1210 Brussels
Belgium
+32 (0)2 224 04 70
etui@etui.org
www.etui.org
D/2021/10.574/31
ISSN: 1994-4446 (print version)
ISSN: 1994-4454 (electronic version)
From the European
Semester to the
Recovery and
Resilience Facility
Some social actors are (not)
resurfacing
Bart Vanhercke and Amy Verdun
With Angelina Atanasova, Slavina
Spasova and Malcolm Thomson
13
Working Paper 2021.13
european trade union institute
Bart Vanhercke: Director, European Social Observatory
Amy Verdun: Professor, University of Victoria
Angelina Atanasova: Researcher, European Social Observatory
Slavina Spasova: Senior Researcher, European Social Observatory
Malcolm Thomson: Research Assistant, University of Victoria
ETUI publications are published to elicit comment and to encourage debate. The views
expressed are those of the author(s) alone and do not necessarily represent the views of
the ETUI nor those of the members of its general assembly.
Citing this report: Vanhercke B. and Verdun A., with Atanasova A., Spasova S. and
Thomson M. (2021) From the European Semester to the Recovery and Resilience Facility.
Some social actors are (not) resurfacing, Working Paper 2021.13, Brussels, ETUI, 48 p.
Brussels, 2021
©Publisher: ETUI aisbl, Brussels
All rights reserved
Print: ETUI Printshop, Brussels
D/2021/10.574/31
ISSN: 1994-4446 (print version)
ISSN: 1994-4454 (electronic version)
The ETUI is financially supported by the European Union. The European Union is not responsible
for any use made of the information contained in this publication.
3WP 2021.13
Table of contents
Abstract ....................................................................................................................................................... 4
Introduction ............................................................................................................................................... 5
1. The European Semester as a ‘Goldilocks’ mode of governance
for the Recovery Facility .......................................................................................................... 7
1.1 From the financial crisis to the pandemic ........................................................................... 7
1.2 Not too hot, not too cold: just right ...................................................................................... 8
1.3 The Semester and the RRF: intrinsically linked ................................................................. 9
1.4 The European Parliament: substantive but not political gains? ................................ 11
1.5 Managing the RRF: the European Commission in pole position .............................. 14
2. Temporary European Semester adaptations to the RRF: EU economic
governance ‘on hold’? .................................................................................................. 16
2.1 Continuity: the Semester Autumn package .................................................................... 16
2.2 Temporary transformation: the end of the Semester as we knew it ....................... 17
2.3 The ‘social’ quality of the RRF: the jury is still out ........................................................ 18
3. The recovery facility: institutional actors in search of a place
at the table ..................................................................................................................... 21
3.1 Initial fears: social aairs territory contested (again) .................................................. 21
3.2 The agency of EU institutional social aairs players: getting a foot
in the door ................................................................................................................................... 22
4. Stakeholder consultation under the RRF: the glass half-empty ........................ 25
4.1 Formal consultation of stakeholders: the RRF Regulation as a landmark ............ 25
4.2 Stakeholder involvement in practice: far from satisfactory ....................................... 27
4.3 The need for ‘quality’ involvement ..................................................................................... 30
5. Of carrots and sticks: hardening the Semester? ................................................... 34
Conclusion and next steps ................................................................................................................ 37
References .................................................................................................................................. 40
Appendix 1: Interview details ............................................................................................... 46
Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................. 48
4WP 2021.13
Abstract
In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, major nancial support has been pledged
to Member States. This funding draws on the EU’s multiannual nancial
framework and the ‘NextGenerationEU’ with, at its core, the temporary
‘Recovery and Resilience Facility’ (RRF). While some reporting templates
have been newly invented, others are linked to the European Semester. This
report examines how and why the Semester became part of the governance of
the RRF. We also ask to what extent this new set-up has changed the power
balance among key EU actors (for example, nancial and economic actors
versus institutional social aairs actors)? Drawing on extensive document
analysis and 32 semi-structured elite interviews, the ndings suggest that
initially, due to the crisis (and desire for fast action), there was a serious
risk that EU institutional social actors were losing the prominence they had
previously earned. They gradually reclaimed their position as the immediacy
of the crisis subsided and a longer-term focus emerged. EU civil servants
also engaged with social partners on both sides of industry, even though it
is questionable whether this consultation has been really meaningful. EU
civil society organisations (CSOs) have been largely sidelined in the RRF
process; and likewise in most Member States, consultation with domestic
stakeholders (both social partners and CSOs) has remained insucient
by any standard. The European Parliament was reasonably successful in
securing its substantive impact during the RRF negotiations. But it has since
failed to insert itself into the approval and assessment procedures applicable
to the EU’s recovery programme.
From the European Semester to the Recovery and Resilience Facility. Some social actors are (not) resurfacing
5WP 2021.13
Introduction1
In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the European Council agreed to provide
major nancial support to Member States. Drawing on a combination of the
EU’s long-term budget (2021–2027) and an additional temporary support
system known as ‘NextGenerationEU’ (NGEU), the EU is providing funds to
help Member States with the fall-out from the crisis. A temporary institutional
structure was created to support Member States in need. While the decision
at the highest level was taken in summer 2020, formal establishment was
nalised in February 2021 (European Parliament and Council of the EU
2021). The so-called ‘Recovery and Resilience Facility’ (RRF), at the core of
the NGEU, provides nancial support to Member States, notably through a
combination of grants and loans. To access the RRF funds, Member States
need to submit detailed national Recovery and Resilience Plans (RRPs).
While some reporting templates were newly invented, others draw on the
European Semester (henceforth ‘Semester’), the EU macroeconomic policy
coordination framework. This report examines how and why the Semester
became part of the governance of the RRF. We ask to what extent this new
set-up has changed the power balance among key EU actors (for example,
nancial and economic actors versus institutional social aairs actors)?
The report distinguishes between ‘EU institutional’ social actors and social
‘stakeholders’. The former are made up of DG Employment, Social Aairs &
Inclusion (DG EMPL) of the European Commission, the Employment, Social
Policy, Health and Consumer Aairs (EPSCO) Council formation, the EU
Employment and Social Protection Committees (EMCO and the SPC) and
the European Parliament’s Committee on Employment and Social Aairs
(EMPL). Social stakeholders comprise both EU and national social partners2
(representatives of workers and employer organisations) and civil society
organisations. Wherever relevant, we distinguish between actor involvement
at EU and national level.
The research done for this report draws on extensive document analysis
and 32 semi-structured elite interviews (October 2020–November 2021),
most of them conducted jointly by Bart Vanhercke and Amy Verdun. The
persons interviewed hold senior positions, for instance in various European
1. This report builds on and further develops Vanhercke and Verdun (2022). It has been
summarised in Vanhercke and Verdun (2021).
2. The European social partners are engaged in European social dialogue, as provided for
under Articles 154 and 155 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU).
Bart Vanhercke and Amy Verdun with Angelina Atanasova, Slavina Spasova and Malcolm Thomson
6WP 2021.13
Commission Directorates-General (DGs), as representatives of European
social partners (both sides of industry) and of civil society organisations.
Other interviewees work in national administrations or represent their
respective Member States in various EU Committees.3
This report is structured as follows. Section 1 examines how the functioning
of the RRF has been envisaged, so far, in the context of the Semester. Section 2
looks at how the Semester is being adapted to become part of the new
institutional set-up. Section 3 discusses the extent to which the governance
of the RRF has given a prominent role to institutional social aairs players.
Section 4 discusses consultation of EU and domestic social partners and civil
society organisations (stakeholders) under the RRF, while Section 5 explores
whether the Semester may become a bit ‘harder’ in the new RRF environment.
The nal section revisits the research questions and reects on winners and
losers in the revised macroeconomic governance architecture.
3. In the text we refer to each interview with a dedicated code, adopting abbreviations
to reect the general institutional aliation of the respondents, while guaranteeing
anonimity. The abbreviations are as follows: BUSINESS (BusinessEurope), COM (European
Commission), Civil Society Organisation (CSO), EESC (European Economic and Social
Committee), EMCO (Employment Committee), ETU (European Trade Union), MEP
(Member of the European Parliament), NOF (National Ocial) and SPC (Social Protection
Committee). More details about the interviews (institutional aliation, position, date and
in-text code) can be found in Appendix 1.
From the European Semester to the Recovery and Resilience Facility. Some social actors are (not) resurfacing
7WP 2021.13
1. The European Semester as a
‘Goldilocks’ mode of governance
for the Recovery Facility
1.1 From the financial crisis to the pandemic
With the outbreak of the Covid-19 crisis, the EU faced major economic and
social challenges. Political actors had learned the importance of a timely
response and of being more proactive when facing a major crisis, especially in
the wake of the euro crisis (Verdun 2015; Ladi and Tsarouhas 2020). With a
new European Parliament and a new Commission in 2019, and the withdrawal
of the United Kingdom ocially completed on 31 January 2020, the EU was
better positioned to take more forceful action. The European Central Bank
(ECB) was among the rst EU actors to oer support, starting on 18 March with
the announcement of the Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme (PEPP),
worth 750 billion euros (€), which by the end of the year had been increased
to €1,850 billion. The European Council held numerous meetings. Member
State governments put forward proposals including possible deepening of
European integration: Spain4 in April, and in mid-May 2020 France and
Germany (French Ministry of Europe and Foreign Aairs 2020)5 advanced
joint proposals for the creation of a €500 billion recovery fund. Others – the
so-called ‘Frugal Four’ (Austria, Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands, to
some extent supported by Finland) – were less enthusiastic about the idea
of giving too much discretion to the EU level. Led by the Netherlands, these
countries emerged as a surprisingly strong coalition (de la Porte and Jensen
2021) and were able to delay and to tone down, to some extent, the size and
scope of the proposed supranational measures.
The Frugal Four demanded a mechanism that could hold countries to account:
some form of conditionality that would enable critical Member States to stop
the process (Celi et al. 2020; Lofven 2020; Schulz and Henökl 2020; Verdun
2021; interviews COM6, MEP2, NOF2, NOF4, NOF5). The Southern countries
were opposed to strong conditionality, worried about being stigmatised
(Giurlando 2021) and had a dierent interpretation of the meaning of scal
solidarity (see also Schure and Della Posta 2021). In the end the RRF was
part of a policy response to tackle the economic recession triggered by the
Covid-19 pandemic: the NGEU (€750 billion). Based on the 2020 gures (in
4. Spain’s non-paper on a European recovery strategy, 19 April 2020,
https://g8p1kplyr33r3krz5b97d1-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/
uploads/2020/04/Spain-.pdf (see Politico 2020).
5. The revival of the Franco-German alliance was crucial in enabling adoption of the grant
instrument in the NGEU (de la Porte and Jensen 2021).
Bart Vanhercke and Amy Verdun with Angelina Atanasova, Slavina Spasova and Malcolm Thomson
8WP 2021.13
euros), the RRF represented by far the largest proportion of the response:
€672.5 billion. Other programmes include: ReactEU (€47.5 billion), InvestEU
(€5.6 billion), Horizon Europe (€5 billion), Rural Development (€7.5 billion),
the Just Transition Fund (€10 billion), and RescEU (€1.9 billion). The EU
managed to combine existing budgetary expenditure with new funds. It
issued debt to nance these expenses; the debt issued and the expenditure
were unprecedented (Fabbrini 2022), to some extent breaking old taboos
(Alcidi and Corti 2021).6 The European Commission insisted that these
funds be spent in pursuit of certain goals: the digital transition, the energy
transition and stimulation of social and inclusive growth with an eye on the
next generation (EP and Council of the EU 2021).
Enter the European Semester: this mode of governance underlying macro-
economic policy coordination involves many societal actors. It is based on
Country Reports and non-binding (although Treaty-based) Country-specic
Recommendations (CSRs), which are initially proposed by the European
Commission following consultations with Member States. The nal adoption
of the CSRs, however, remains in the hands of the Member States through the
Council. The Semester has evolved over time to be ‘not too soft and not too
hard’, leaving ample room for manoeuvre regarding the choice of policies to
be implemented.7 Countries of the ‘North’ and of the ‘South’ have been given
dierent recommendations in this regard, with Germany and the Netherlands
being encouraged to increase wages, whereas the ‘South’ was advised to keep
tabs on wage increases (D’Erman et al. 2022).
1.2 Not too hot, not too cold: just right
Although it has been an integral part of the EU’s socio-economic governance
since its inception in 2011, the eectiveness of the Semester has been mixed,
and compliance with CSRs modest (Haas et al. 2020; Hagelstam et al. 2019).
It was therefore not immediately obvious to the authors of this report that the
Semester would be taken as central to the new macroeconomic governance,
even though it has been identied as a mode of governance that seeks to
achieve various objectives and respond to diering pressures. These include,
for example, balancing economic and social objectives; supranational and
intergovernmental tendencies; and technocratic and democratic modes of
governance (see Verdun and Zeitlin 2018). Some assessments of the Semester
focus on issues tackled by the CSRs and include case studies, whereas others
take stock of overall compliance with the overarching CSRs (D’Erman and
Verdun 2022). Yet it remains a challenge to identify direct causality – that
is, how much inuence the CSRs have actually had on domestic policies
(interviews COM6, NOF2, NOF3, NOF5, NOF7; D’Erman et al. 2022). The
seriousness with which Member States have regarded the process has
6. Not all scholars agree that this situation represents a true break with the past (for example,
Howarth and Quaglia 2021).
7. See Bekker (2020) for a discussion of ‘hardening’ and ‘softening’ trends in CSRs regarding
pensions and wages; and Knodt et al. (2020) on energy policy.
From the European Semester to the Recovery and Resilience Facility. Some social actors are (not) resurfacing
9WP 2021.13
indeed varied a great deal (Bokhorst 2022; Van der Veer 2022). Ultimately,
responsibility for domestic policies lies with the Member States; the aim of
the Semester is to guide EU-wide coordination.
Elsewhere, Vanhercke and Verdun (2022) have argued that the Semester
has served as a ‘Goldilocks’ (Mure 1831/2010) mode of governance. The
reference is to the children’s story ‘The Three Bears’, in which a young girl
named Goldilocks tastes three dierent bowls of porridge and nds she
prefers porridge that is neither too hot nor too cold, but just right. In the same
vein, the Semester provides structure and direction, while not being overly
intrusive. Those more in favour of EU-level intervention nd the Semester
insucient because it is not stringent enough (Bokhorst 2022); those who are
more dismissive of hierarchical rule by the EU over the Member States nd
that the EU is interfering too much (Schout 2021).8 Yet in choosing the CSRs
and the mechanisms underlying governance, the Semester seems to have
been ‘just right’: not too hard and not too soft.
Within the governance of the RRF, the Semester is perceived as appropriately
situated between these two extremes, enabling a balance to be struck between
providing sucient constraints while leaving considerable leeway to the
Member States to choose and implement their preferred domestic policy
options. The latter is essential because many of the issues addressed in the
context of the RRF are rmly entrenched national competences, and because
a signicant part of the newly available funding consists of loans to countries.
1.3 The Semester and the RRF: intrinsically linked
How has the alignment between the Semester and the RRF become
institutionalised? The broad picture of how the RRF is embedded in the
Semester can be understood from various EU documents. The European
Commission paved the way, in its May 2020 Communication on CSRs, when it
underlined that the ‘close alignment between the EU budget and the Semester
is essential’, while pointing to the continued importance of the (refocused)
Semester, notably to guide ‘reforms and investments’ (European Commission
2020e: 15–16). While the July European Council (2020) left the detailed
governance of the recovery instrument unsettled (Fabbrini 2022), it played an
important role in cementing the position of the Semester. Although it was not
at all certain at the outset, the European Council conclusions indeed endorsed
the stronger link between the EU budget and the Semester, as well as the
need for further implementation of the European Pillar of Social Rights,
and equal opportunities for all (European Council 2020: para. 17). These
views are reected in the RRF Regulation of February 2021, which stipulates
that ‘the European Semester for economic policy coordination (European
8. Savage and Howarth (2018) report the rst case of sanctions against a region, while Baeten
and Vanhercke (2017) ag the EU’s increasingly intrusive economic surveillance of national
healthcare systems.
Bart Vanhercke and Amy Verdun with Angelina Atanasova, Slavina Spasova and Malcolm Thomson
10 WP 2021.13
Semester), including the principles of the European Pillar of Social Rights,
is the framework to identify national reform priorities and monitor their
implementation’ (EP and Council of the EU 2021: 3(4)).
The alignment between the Semester and the RRF is explained in the
Regulation as occurring along three lines. First, the RRPs will help to
address ‘all or a signicant subset of’ challenges identied in the relevant
CSRs, or in other relevant documents ocially adopted by the Commission
in the Semester. Second, in order to streamline the content and the number
of documents requested, Member States may submit their National Reform
Programmes (NRP) and their RRP in a single integrated document. Third,
twice-yearly reporting on the progress made in achieving the investment and
reform commitments will take place in the context of the Semester (European
Parliament and Council of the EU 2021, emphasis added).
The nal RRF Regulation also conrms that the criteria related to (i) the
CSRs, (ii) the strengthening of growth potential, job creation and economic,
social and institutional resilience,9 and (iii) the implementation of the EPSR,
‘should require the highest score of the assessment’. In addition, ‘eective
contribution to the green and digital transitions should also be a prerequisite
for a positive assessment’ (European Parliament and Council of the EU 2021:
21): each RRP will have to include a minimum of 37 per cent of expenditure
related to climate and a minimum level of 20 per cent of expenditure
related to digital initiatives. By contrast, no explicit ‘social’ targets have
been included in the RRF Regulation agreed between the Council and the
European Parliament. This lack of explicit social targets has occurred despite
the debate at the Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumer Aairs
(EPSCO) Council about setting such social targets, notably in the context of
the Pillar Action Plan. The Social Platform (2020a), from its side, had called
for the ‘inclusion of a 25 per cent earmarking for social investment, as well
as bringing back the implementation of the EPSR to the forefront of the
European Semester’.
The ASGS 2021 illustrates why domestic and EU policymakers had decided
that the Semester and the RRF were to become ‘intrinsically linked’ (European
Commission 2020b: 12): the Semester provides a well-established (that is,
predictable and comprehensive) framework for the coordination of economic
and employment policies, to guide the EU and the Member States through the
challenges of the recovery and twin transitions (European Commission 2020b:
5). The Semester oers important information and presentational advantages
for identication of the priority areas in the preparation of RRPs, which cover
a wide variety of policy initiatives, while the timeframe for setting a complex
and multifaceted national reform agenda for the RRPs was very tight (roughly
between October 2020 and April 2021, when the draft RRPs were due). As
9. The RRF Regulation denes ‘resilience’ as ‘the ability to face economic, social and
environmental shocks or persistent structural changes in a fair, sustainable and inclusive
way’ (European Parliament and Council of the EU 2021: Art. 2 (5)).
From the European Semester to the Recovery and Resilience Facility. Some social actors are (not) resurfacing
11W P 2021.13
some interviewees argued, by building on Semester tools and practices, the
Member States have a chance to get their reform and investment priorities
‘right’ from the very beginning, especially given the one-o nature of the
formulation of the RRPs (interviews COM5, ETU2, MEP1; see also Moschella
2020: 9, 20). The fact that all CSRs are deemed relevant does not solve the
challenge that RRPs are expected to be consistent with multiple priorities,
which also makes it dicult for the Commission to steer the planned reforms
and investments (interviews COM6, EMCO2, ETU2, NOF4, NOF5).
1.4 The European Parliament: substantive but not
political gains?
While the nal RRF Regulation agreed between the European Parliament
and the Council mainly formalises the arrangements decided upon in the
previous months, some key changes are worth agging. First, while the text
does not include the ‘social targets’ some hoped for (see 1.3)10, the European
Parliament, in its rst (and only) reading, successfully undertook to give the
EPSR more prominence in the nal Regulation (Europe an Parliament 2020),11
as well as including the principle of collective bargaining. Importantly, the
European Parliament has enlarged the scope of the Regulation by expanding
Article 3 with reference to the EPSR: ‘social and territorial cohesion, taking
into account the objectives of the European Pillar of Social Rights’ (ibid).12
Crucially, as mentioned above, ‘contributing to the implementation’ of the
European Pillar of Social Rights (EPSR) is now added to the list of criteria
that ‘should require the highest score’ of the Commission’s assessment of
the plans, even preceding ‘contribution to the green and digital transitions’
(European Parliament and Council of the EU 2021: §42).
Equally important is the fact that, while the Commission’s draft RRF
Regulation was completely silent on gender issues, now, as a result of the
European Parliament’s strong bargaining (interview MEP1; O’Dwyer 2022),
the nal text not only recognises that women ‘have been particularly aected
by the Covid-19 crisis’, but also requires Member States to explain how the
measures in their RRPs ‘are expected to contribute to gender equality and
equal opportunities for all and the mainstreaming of those objectives’ (ibid:
63(o)). Throughout the text of the Regulation, the European Parliament has
10. The European Parliament had called upon the Commission ‘to develop social targets,
including on poverty reduction’ (European Parliament 2020: (11)).
11. The EPSR was referred to a single time in the draft RRF Regulation, in the ‘whereas’ clauses
(European Commission 2020a: 10(3)); the nal Regulation refers more than ten times to
the EPSR. The European Parliament (2020) also added the following to Recital 11 in the
preamble: ‘In their recovery and resilience plans, Member States should pay particular
attention to support and empowerment of workers that may suer from the consequence
of the transitions, in particular by implementing the European Pillar of Social Rights and
defending the principle of collective bargaining.’
12. The Opinion of the European Parliament’s Committee on Employment and Social Aairs
had even more extensive suggestions on that front (EMPL 2020).
Bart Vanhercke and Amy Verdun with Angelina Atanasova, Slavina Spasova and Malcolm Thomson
12 WP 2021.13
included references to the Union’s Gender Equality Strategy 2020–2025,
as well as to gender mainstreaming.13 It is potentially important that the
Parliament also managed to include a reference to ‘gender impact assessment’
of the RRPs (Article 16, paragraph 2).
These points illustrate the broader nding that the European Parliament was
able to organise a ‘grand coalition’ (with three rapporteurs from the three
main party-groups)14 to handle this strategic le. As a result, the European
Parliament as a whole was able to put its mark – in a context of very tight time
constraints15 – on the RRF Regulation (interviews MEP1, MEP2; Crum 2021).
Comparing the draft RRF regulation from the Commission with the revised
text following the European Parliament’s rst reading, Closa Montero and
colleagues (2021) identied the European Parliament’s impact, concentrating
on the following aspects: access to information (for example, the European
Parliament will remain fully in the loop of documents exchanged between
Member States and the Commission); establishing improved accountability
mechanisms (for example, a new ‘Recovery and Resilience Scoreboard’ will
display progress on the implementation of the RRPs) and implementation
procedures; and spending priorities and criteria for assessing national
recovery plans (Closa Montero et al. 2021: 166).
The latter point is of course key: the European Parliament managed to
broaden the objectives of the RRF to six European policy priorities (but no
special arrangements are made for EU agship projects) and secured the
incorporation of a range of wider societal concerns (interviews MEP1, MEP2).
Importantly, Member States, Council and Commission agreed to commit to
the requirements of a minimum of 37 per cent for green measures and 20 per
cent for digital initiatives. Consequently, to determine the shares of these
two primary policy areas, elaborate systems of ‘climate tracking’ and ‘digital
tagging’ have been developed (Crum 2021). Crucially, however, the European
Parliament failed to insert itself in the process of assessing the RRPs (and
thereby in the revamped European Semester): the decision on the RRPs
remains an ‘implementing act’ (and not a ‘delegated act’16) which is adopted
by the Council on a proposal from the Commission, eectively excluding the
European Parliament from appraisal of the plans.
13. Namely, in the preamble, recitals 5a, 5b, 6g, 16b, 20a, as well as in Article 4 (outlining the
specic objectives of the Regulation) and Article 14 (eligibility).
14. Eider Gardiazabal Rubial (S&D), Siegfried Mureşan (EPP) and Dragoș Pîslaru (Renew).
The European Parliament (2020) rst reading position was adopted with a sweeping
majority: 582 votes in favour, 40 against and 69 abstentions.
15. The European Parliament eectively started working in mid-summer 2020, once the heads
of state and government had sealed the NGEU deal. The European Parliament (2020)
adopted its rst reading position on 13 November. It took barely a month for agreement to
be reached between the Council presidency and the Parliament, which was conrmed on
18 December 2020.
16. Parliament and Council may revoke the delegation or express objections to a delegated
act. Once the Commission has adopted the act, Parliament and Council generally have two
months to formulate any objections.
From the European Semester to the Recovery and Resilience Facility. Some social actors are (not) resurfacing
13W P 2021.13
Another European Parliament achievement was that Member States now must
indicate whether they consulted with stakeholders about their draft RRP and
how this consultation is reected in the RRP (see Section 4 for a detailed
discussion). The European Parliament also managed to obtain a mandate
for the European Commission to develop (through delegated regulation) a
methodology for reporting social expenditure, including on measures aimed
at children and young people, and at improving gender equality (European
Parliament and Council of the EU 2021: 31§63). The methodology’s objective
is to provide, in a transparent and accountable manner, summary information
on the social expenditure under the Facility.17 This compromise was the only
one that was acceptable to the Member States to counterbalance somewhat
the lack of social targets in the RRF Regulation (interviews COM11, NOF7;
see Section 2.2).
Finally, albeit not exclusively related to the RRPs, the European Parliament
insisted on ensuring that the rule of law be upheld, prompting the Commission
to delay the adoption of the Hungarian and Polish plans. In a similar vein,
a resolution adopted in February by the EESC (2021) brings to the fore the
problem of the rule of law and democratic backsliding in the planning and
implementation of the RRPs. The Resolution emphasises that the RRPs
must abide by the principles of ‘the protection of human and social rights,
democratic values and the rule of law’ (ibid, Para 1.2), implementing the
RRPs in accordance with the values enshrined in Article 2 TFEU. For this
purpose, to address any potential aws, the RRF design envisages a so-
called ‘emergency brake’ (see Recitals 52 and 53 of the Regulation preamble).
This provision served as a compromise between the initial Commission
proposal and pressure from the Frugal Four to insert a Council veto, as an
emergency mechanism when an issue of mutual trust arises concerning the
spending of RRF funds in an EU Member State. In case of disagreements over
implementation and disbursements, a Member State may take the issue to the
European Council (interview COM10).18 The much more extensive wording
on the rule of law suggested by the European Parliament19 in the rst reading
17. The Commission will assign each measure with a primary social dimension to one of the
nine social policy areas, which are to be aggregated into four broader social categories,
namely: (i) employment and skills, (ii) education, (iii) health and long-term care, and
(iv) social policies.
18. ‘The release of funds under the Facility is contingent on the satisfactory fullment by the
Member States of the relevant milestones and targets, set out in the recovery and resilience
plans, the assessment of such plans having been approved by the Council. Before a decision
authorising the disbursement of the nancial contribution and, where applicable, of the
loan, is adopted by the Commission, it should ask the Economic and Financial Committee
for its opinion on the satisfactory fullment of the relevant milestones and targets by the
Member States on the basis of a preliminary assessment by the Commission’ (European
Parliament and Council of the EU 2021: Recital 52).
19. Recital 16k of the preamble of the Regulation, as suggested by the European Parliament,
and the thorough procedural elaboration in Article 9a (on the ‘measures linking the Facility
to the protection of the Union budget in the case of generalised deciencies as regards the
rule of law’) have been entirely deleted in the last version of the Regulation, leaving almost
no trace of the rule of law condition. Even the brief mention of the rule of law in the rst
version of the Regulation (proposed by the European Commission in Recital 39 of the
preamble) has been deleted in the very nal version adopted on 12 February 2021.
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14 WP 2021.13
of the Regulation has been watered down by the Council (at the insistence of
Hungary and Poland). It remains to be seen, therefore, whether the rule of
law mechanism will have actual teeth during the implementation of the RRF.
1.5 Managing the RRF: the European Commission
in pole position
The ocial EU documents discussed above also provide a broad-brush view
of how the RRF is to be managed in procedural terms. The steering of the
RRF’s implementation, as well as coordination of the Semester, is centralised
within the Recovery and Resilience Task Force (RECOVER), which was newly
established in August 2020 within the European Commission’s Secretariat-
General (SECGEN). Working in close cooperation with the Directorate General
for Economic and Financial Aairs (DG ECFIN), the Task Force reports
directly to the Commission President. A formal role has also been assigned to
the Economic and Finance Committee (EFC), even if in practice much of the
actual deliberations take place in the ‘technical’ Council preparatory bodies
(Coreper II). The Commission should ask the opinion of the EFC, which has
the right to pull the ‘emergency brake’ if a Member State has not fullled
the required milestones (representing qualitative achievements) and targets
(representing quantitative results) set in its RRP, the basis for the assessment
of payment requests. In this unlikely case, the matter may be referred to the
European Council.
While the emergency brake can theoretically slow down disbursement
of funds by up to three months, some argue that the RRF ‘has placed the
[European Commission] in the driving seat to steer and monitor the use of
funding’ (Corti and Núñez Ferrer 2021: 4). One of our interviewees conrms
that Member States ‘will have to heavily, heavily rely on the Commission’, as
smaller countries in particular ‘will have diculties to really challenge the
Commission assessment’ (interview COM6), especially because satisfactory
fullment of milestones and targets will be the key to unlocking the money
(interviews NOF6, NOF7, COM11). By (i) encouraging Member States to
‘interact with its services to informally and bilaterally discuss the draft plans’
as early as possible when preparing them (European Commission 2020b: 13),
and (ii) providing Member States with (initial and updated) guidance on how
best to present their recovery and resilience plans (European Commission
2020c; European Commission 2021a), the Commission has immediately
risen to the challenge in a new context, in which the institution does much
more than manage the practical implementation of RRF governance. The
Commission can now raise resources and run a supranational economic
policy, while its negative assessments (or a threat of these) can block their
disbursement. It should be noted that, in practice, the latter scenario is very
unlikely, in view of the shared interest of all parties concerned to spend the
money without delay. Nevertheless, the Frugal Four were initially critical of
disbursing funds without some form of checks and balances: the Commission
will need to remain sensitive to these opposing pressures from Member States.
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15WP 2021.13
This institutional set-up for managing the RRF has given rise to considerable
concern among EU institutional actors and social stakeholders alike. Many of
our interviewees were worried about (i) the inclusion of social aairs players,
and (ii) the incorporation of social priorities in the key RRF decisions.20 The
concern initially was that the gradual achievements during the past European
Semester cycles on these two points had been abandoned in the initial RRF
set-up. By the end of 2020, however, the tide was turning, and various EU-
level institutional social actors managed to have their voices heard again in
the Semester, and through it, in the RRF. As we discuss further in Section
4, the involvement of social stakeholders (social partners and civil society
organisations) has been inadequate, both at the European and domestic level.
20. These two points together are referred to by Zeitlin and Vanhercke (2018) as ‘socialisation’.
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16 WP 2021.13
2. Temporary European Semester
adaptations to the RRF: EU economic
governance ‘on hold’?
This section examines how the inclusion of the Semester in the RRF changes
economic policy coordination. Some aspects of the Semester have remained
largely unaected, whereas others were interrupted by the pandemic. It
was not always clear to the players involved whether these changes were
temporary and would eventually return to the usual processes, or whether
they represented a break with past practices.
2.1 Continuity: the Semester Autumn package
What remained the same was that the European Commission published its
Semester Autumn package, as planned, on 18 November 2020, basing it, as
usual, on its Autumn 2020 Economic Forecast. The package includes the
Opinions on the Draft Budgetary Plans (DBP) of the Euro Area Member
States for 2021 and the Euro Area recommendation (European Commission
2020d), adopted by the Council in January 2021. The Autumn package
provides policy guidance on the short-term priorities that Euro Area Member
States should pursue in their RRPs to address the pandemic.
The Semester Autumn package also includes the Alert Mechanism Report
(AMR), which nds increased risks of imbalances in the twelve Member
States that had already experienced imbalances before the Covid-19
pandemic. The package also contains a proposal for a Joint Employment
Report (JER), which shows that the groups hardest hit by the Covid-19 crisis
were young people – who form an important contingent of non-standard and
self-employed workers – as well as women. As the Employment Committee
(EMCO) and Social Protection Committee (SPC) point out, the impact of the
pandemic on the workforce varied in terms of severity (EMCO and SPC 2021:
8). Through its in-depth analysis, the JER helped Member States identify
priority areas for reforms and investment, to be included in their RRPs. In
several Member States, anti-crisis measures have been designed jointly with
the social partners (EMCO and SPC 2021). As a result, Member States are
‘extensively using or plan to use, in addition to national funding, available
EU funds – notably the European Social Fund Plus and the Recovery and
Resilience Facility – in order to carry out relevant reforms’ (EMCO 2021: 5).
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17W P 2021.13
2.2 Temporary transformation:
the end of the Semester as we knew it
Some other components of the Semester, however, were transformed very
quickly, to align them with the RRF. Consequently, many of our interviewees
felt that key aspects of the Semester were ‘on hold’, ‘frozen’ and ‘hanging
in the background’, while others referred to ‘lightening’ or ‘streamlining’
(interviews COM5, COM6, SPC1, ETU2) of the 2021 cycle of the Semester to
reduce the reporting burden for the national and EU administrations, uphold
consistency in the key messages coming from the EU, and channel the RRF
money to the Member States as soon as possible. Thus, the Commission’s
Annual Sustainable Growth Strategy (ASGS) 2021 was published two months
earlier than scheduled (in September 2020), without the usual consultation at
the national or EU levels (causing tensions with, among others, the European
social partners; interviews COM4, ETU1, BUSINESS). As demonstrated
above, the document was transformed into strategic guidance to the Member
States for the implementation of the RRF (European Commission 2020b).
An even more signicant change was made to the Country Reports, which
were not adopted by the European Commission in 2021, in the absence of
the Semester ‘Winter package’: Country Reports have been replaced, as the
Semester’s main analytical reference documents (also acting as a basis for
the annual CSRs), by the assessment which the Commission made of the
RRPs during the summer of 2021. Member States were asked to submit these
reports between 15 October 2020 (draft plans) and 30 April 2021 (nal plans),
even though a large majority submitted after these deadlines (see Section 2.3).
The assessments have been published, in staggered batches,21 in the form of
Sta Working Documents, together with Commission proposals for Council
implementing Decisions.22
Multilateral surveillance between Member States, one of the slowly built
cornerstones of the Semester, has continued, in the months following the
announcement of the RRF in May 2020, through a largely written procedure,
in very dicult (pandemic) circumstances. While more emphasis was placed
on bilateral dialogue between the Commission and individual Member States
conc ern ing the refo r ms and inve st m ents pr opos e d in th e R RF, the re ‘w a s a cle a r
intention not to los e what had been built up in terms of multilateral sur vei llance
during the previous years’ (interview SPC1). Both the peer reviews organised
as part of the European Employment Strategy ‘Mutual Learning Programme’
and the peer reviews in social protection and social inclusion (SPC) continued,
even if stakeholders seem to have been given a less prominent role (CSO3).
21. Depending on the delivery of the Recovery and Resilience Plans and the nalisation of the
Commission’s assessments.
22. At the time of writing (mid November 2021), 26 RRPs have been submitted to the
Commission, 22 of which have been approved by the Commission. Some 19 plans have so
far been adopted by the Council, while pre-nancing has been disbursed to 17 Member
States. For the Commission assessment of the Recovery and Resilience Plans see:
https://ec.europa.eu/info/business-economy-euro/recovery-coronavirus/recovery-and-
resilience-facility/recovery-and-resilience-plans-assessments_en
Bart Vanhercke and Amy Verdun with Angelina Atanasova, Slavina Spasova and Malcolm Thomson
18 WP 2021.13
The most notable change brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic in the 2021
Semester cycle is that no new Country-specic Recommendations (CSR s)
have been issued to Member States that have presented an RRP, except
on scal matters in the context of the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP).23
During 2021 all earlier CSRs remain valid and should steer the reforms
and investments proposed by the Member States in their RRPs. In practice,
however, this process has its limitations: as the European Court of Auditors
(2020: article 46) pointed out in its opinion on the RRF, ‘in certain cases, the
CSRs contain a mix of issues, and generally lack clear timeframes and costs’.
It could therefore be expected that Member States will endeavour to spend
the new funds according to their domestic preferences, while the Commission
will seek to ensure that each RRP contains the required expenditure related
to climate (37 per cent), digital transition (20 per cent), and employment and
social policies (that is, linked to the Action Plan of the EPSR). Initial analysis
of the RRPs indeed conrms that the spending priorities have been closely
linked to the last cycle of CSRs in several Member States (Corti et al. 2021;
Pilati 2021).
A nal key change that has occurred in the 2021 Semester cycle relates to the
involvement of social actors: we discuss this aspect in detail in Sections 3
and 4.
2.3 The ‘social’ quality of the RRF: the jury is still out
At this point, any overall assessment of the social quality of the RRF must
remain tentative. We can only paint a rst picture of the extent to which
the European Commission (including by referring to the Action Plan of the
EPSR), has been able to inuence the social priorities of the RRPs. Indeed,
such an assessment has been dicult to make because several RRPs were
submitted only recently and most of them are still (several months since their
submission) available only in national languages, adding to the sentiment
that the RRP process has been ‘notoriously untransparent’ (interviews CSO2,
Eurofound). Some initial ndings can be highlighted, however. First, there is
the element of timing: several of our interviewees pointed out that the Pillar
Action Plan was published too late (that is, at the beginning of March 2021)
for them to impact the RRP drafting process (interviews ETU2, EMCO2,
NOF5). This situation occurred in Portugal (the rst Member State ocially to
submit its RRP to the Commission, on 22 April 2021) and in Germany, where
the process of drafting the RRP was quite advanced already in August 2020
(interview NOF5). The setting was of course very dierent in countries such as
Estonia and Czechia (RRP submitted June 2021), Malta (plan submitted July
2021), let alone in Bulgaria (plan submitted October 2021) or the Netherlands
(no RRP submitted at the time of writing). It should be noted that, in several
23. The general escape clause remains in place for as long as it is deemed necessary to allow
Member States to implement measures to contain the coronavirus outbreak and mitigate its
negative socio-economic eects.
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19WP 2 021.13
Member States, unexpected events, such as a change of domestic government,
have considerably aected the planning and preparation of the RRPs. The
2021 Italian government crisis (January–February 2021) ultimately gave
more time for consultation with dierent stakeholders, and resulted in
revisions to the RRP once the government of Mario Draghi was in place. In
other EU Member States, the elaboration of the RRP has been considerably
delayed: this is the case for Bulgaria (where a caretaker government has been
in place since May 2021), and the Netherlands, where government formation
talks have become the longest on record and are at the time of writing still
ongoing (since the 17 March 2020 elections). Thus, the timing is only a partial
factor in explaining the place of social targets in the RRPs.
The question of the place of social reforms and investments in the RRPs is
intrinsically linked to the situation of the country before the pandemic, as
countries may already have identied issues and planned investments and
reforms (in several cases also highlighted in previous CSRs) (Corti et al.
2021, interview NOF5, Pilati 2021). For instance, both the Portuguese and
Spanish RRPs are assessed to be largely based on the 2019 CSRs, and both
plans include several social protection and social inclusion reforms. In the
case of Portugal, almost half of the RRP funds are focused on two pillars,
one of which is linked to social issues: ‘health, and economic, social and
institutional resilience (25 per cent) and green transition (24 per cent), while
smart, sustainable and inclusive growth and digital transformation’ account
for respectively 23 per cent and 15 per cent of the investments (Corti et al.
2021).
It remains to be seen whether the ‘social recalibration’ of the RRF objectives
obtained by the European Parliament during the negotiations on the
Regulation (see Section 1.4) has ultimately impacted the social quality of the
RRPs: in the absence of quantitative social targets (also because it seems more
dicult to agree on social targets than on green or digital targets), Member
States seem to be largely free to choose the extent to which they also wish to
invest in social reforms and investments. One of our interviewees, however,
points out that during the EPSCO meeting in June 2021, a large majority
of Member States armed that they had already introduced the headline
targets in their RRPs. Seemingly, the Porto Social Summit in May 2021 was
a boost to the incorporation of social objectives and targets into the draft
plans (interview NOF4). Furthermore, ongoing research by Eihmanis (2021)
suggests that the European Commission has been strategically using the
RRF to push for long-term structural social reforms, based on long-standing
CSRs, in the economically liberal Baltic countries (in Latvia, for instance, the
Commission seems to have been pushing for a higher guaranteed minimum
income24).
Some of our interviewees highlight that one of the reasons for the lack of
quantied social objectives in the RRF is that there is no good methodology
24. Private correspondence with Edgars Eihmanis.
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20 WP 2021.13
for translating social expenditure into quantied targets: ‘the way out
is to dene a methodology to track social expenditure and put it in a
regulation […]. There’s no hard target but we’ll try to know how much will
be spent in those areas’ (interview NOF4). Such a methodology for reporting
social expenditure in the RRPs was adopted by the European Commission
(2021c) at the end of September 202125: a delegated regulation (based on
Article 29 (4) of the RRF Regulation) sets out the methodology to be used for
reporting social expenditure in the RRPs, emphasising ‘adequate reporting
on the implementation of measures that have a social dimension, […]
including on children and [young people]’ (European Commission 2021c).
Importantly, gender equality should also be agged in reports on social
expenditure. The new methodolog y consists of two steps: (i) each refor m and
investment included in the RRPs ‘with a primary social dimension should
be associated by the Commission, in consultation where necessary with that
Member State’ with a specic social policy category, and (ii) each measure
of a social nature with a specic focus on children, young people and gender
should be agged, allowing for specic reporting on expenditure in these
areas (ibid: Article 1).
This delegated regulation clearly goes beyond the ‘technicalities’ of budgeting:
it sends a clear signal about the importance of social investments and reform,
echoing what the European Parliament proposed in its rst reading. Tagging
money through a harmonised methodology indeed provides a way of ensuring
that resources are spent on specic objectives (interview NOF4). What is more,
through this methodology, which the Member States are obliged to apply, the
Commission ensures its role in mapping and comparing domestic resources
spent on social measures: the role of the EU in scrutinising employment
and social policies, which has been expanding for more than a decade in the
context of the Social Open Method of Coordination (OMC), can thus be seen
as further enhanced.
25. See more about the Recovery and Resilience Facility – Methodology for reporting social
spending on the European Commission website, available at: https://ec.europa.eu/info/
law/better-regulation/have-your-say/initiatives/13145-Recovery-and-Resilience-Facility-
methodology-for-reporting-social-spending_en]. Last accessed: 28 October 2021.
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21WP 2021.13
3. The recovery facility: institutional
actors in search of a place at the table
A key concern following the summer 2020 European Council was whether
those actors traditionally involved in the Semester would now also be involved
in the renewed macroeconomic policy coordination. Would EU institutional
social actors have a smaller role to play, as they feared initially? Or would
they manage to have their voices heard after all?
3.1 Initial fears: social aairs territory contested
(again)
Nearly all our interviewees (for example, COM2, COM3, COM4, COM7,
CSO1, CSO2, EMCO1, ETU1, NOF1, NOF5, SPC1) explained that, during
the rst weeks following the decision to launch the RRF, the ‘institutional
EU social aairs players’ felt that they had lost much of the voice they had
acquired slowly but surely through ‘socialisation’26 of the Semester (Zeitlin
and Vanhercke 2018). The European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) and
the Social Platform (2020b) were concerned about social stakeholders’ lack of
involvement in the design and adoption of the RRPs.
Importantly, however, several of our respondents felt that social players had
been side-lined not because of a deliberate decision to rule out social actors,
but rather as a result of ‘crisis policymaking’ and ‘improvisation’ during
a ‘storm from all sides’, when ‘everything was happening at the same time’
(interviews COM4, NOF4, NOF5). The fact that the ‘territory’ gained by social
aairs players over the past decade again seemed to be in doubt is nevertheless
striking, because the RRPs are supposed to contain ‘measures that aim
to strengthen social cohesion and social protection systems’ (European
Parliament and Council of the EU 2021: 6 (2.3)). The emphasis placed on
social issues is also reected in the RRPs that have been approved by the
Commission (interview COM9), whose analysis of the recovery plans shows
that around 30 per cent of total expenditure in these plans will be directed to
social and health policy (Agence Europe 2021). The source of the 30 per cent
26. Socialisation comprises (i) a growing emphasis on social objectives in the Semester’s policy
orientations; (ii) intensied monitoring, surveillance and review of national reforms by EU
social and employment policy actors, and (iii) an enhanced role for these actors relative to
their economic policy counterparts in drafting, reviewing and amending the CSRs (Zeitlin
and Vanhercke 2018).
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22 WP 2021.13
seems rather elusive at the time of writing,27 however, and the gure itself
has been contested, including on social media (interviews CSO2, CSO3). It
could be perceived as a promising ‘score’, especially with a view to reassuring
(and somehow rewarding) actors such as the European Parliament, which
endeavoured to secure a stronger social dimension for the RRF.
The reality is, however, that not all RRPs have been approved. Furthermore,
such ‘social’ tagging is extremely dicult, because the categorisation of
projects varies a great deal from country to country, and covers thousands of
investments, reforms, milestones and targets. Arguably the greatest challenge
for elaborating a methodology for cross-country comparison is the denition
of non-overlapping spending categories (Darvas et al. 2021). A specic reform
or investment could indeed support various purposes (such as green, digital,
skills). No single classication is ‘ideal’: the categories could be based on,
for instance, the six pillars of the RRF (Art. 3), the seven agship areas for
investment and reforms dened by the European Commission (2020b:9-11)
in the ASGS 2021, economic sectors and so on. Evaluations of the plans show
that in some cases, there is no clear assessment or indicator of the impact of a
proposed reform or investment (Corti et al. 2021; Pilati 2021). For instance, the
Greek and Polish plans propose reforms and investments regarding vulnerable
groups and regions, but impact assessment is lacking (Pilati 2021). In other
national plans, the impact on vulnerable groups is not an objective per se, but
a by-product of other measures.
In this context, some have called on the Commission to request that
governments present ex ante social impact assessments of their measures
(Pilati 2021). Clear indicators, criteria and areas should be chosen in any
attempt to dene the ‘social dimension’ of spending: one step towards
such a clearer estimate is the recently adopted (September 2021) delegated
regulation that denes a methodology for reporting social spending in the
RRPs (European Commission, 2021c; see Section 2).
3.2 The agency of EU institutional social aairs
players: getting a foot in the door
The previous section demonstrated that, while the Member States’ RRPs
include essential social investments and reforms that are, for some countries,
linked to unprecedented EU funding,28 social aairs players have so far
obtained few formal entry-points to the RRF decision-making process, be it
27. The gure of 30 per cent was expressed by Céline Gauer, director-general of the Recovery
and Resilience Task Force (RECOVER) at a meeting of the European Parliament’s
Committee on Employment and Social Aairs (EMPL) on 1 September 2021. To date,
the authors of the present report have found no ocial document conrming this gure
(Agence Europe 2021).
28. For some Member States, such as Bulgaria and Croatia, the nancial contribution is
estimated to be above 10 per cent of GDP, while for at least ve other countries the additional
resources will be equivalent to between 5 and 10 per cent of GDP (Vanhercke et al. 2021).
From the European Semester to the Recovery and Resilience Facility. Some social actors are (not) resurfacing
23WP 2021.13
at the EU or national level. Some nuance is warranted, however: despite the
apparent side-lining of social players in the summer and autumn of 2020,
there are indications that the practices institutionalised during the past
decade may, in the end, prove to be quite robust (see also Vesan et al. 2021).
Some interview partners indeed indicated that, as of late 2020 and early 2021,
there was an inclination to return to the more ‘normal’ Semester practices.29
Most of our respondents in fact hope for a quick return to ‘business as usual’,
even though they appreciate that there will still need to be key changes to
the Semester (interviews COM4, COM5, COM11, NOF5, NOF7, EMCO2,
ETU2 and SPC1). This view is also reected in rather strong wording in the
horizontal opinion from EMCO and the SPC (2021:4) on the 2021 cycle of the
European Semester, which states that ‘there is overwhelming support amongst
the Members of the two committees for a timely return to a comprehensive
Semester process, reinstating all core Semester elements, already in the next
cycle’.
Pushed by the German Minister for Labour and Social Aairs (Hubertus
Heil) and ultimately supported by his Social Democratic Party (SPD)
colleague and Minister of Finance (Olaf Scholz), the German Presidency of
the Council of the EU (July-December 2020) played a pivotal role in eorts to
involve the EPSCO Council in the RRF decisions. In its Council Conclusions
of 23 November 2020, the Social Aairs Ministers indeed decided to take
the unprecedented step of explicitly invoking Article 148 TFEU. The Council
‘tasks the Employment Committee to examine – pursuant to Art. 148(3)
and 148(4) of the TFEU and in light of the employment guidelines – the
implementation of the relevant policies of the Member States as set out in
their National Reform Programmes, including their RRPs, to cooperate with
the Social Protection Committee where relevant, and to inform the Council
of such an examination’ (Council of the EU 2020: para. 20). By underlining
that the RRPs are part of the National Reform Programmes – which both the
EMCO and the SPC have reviewed in the past – the EPSCO Council clearly
attempted to put its mark on these strategic documents. Consequently, the
EMCO Secretariat – which is provided by the European Commission DG
for Employment, Social Aairs & Inclusion (DG EMPL) – used the annual
review and update of its multilateral surveillance activities to ensure a place
for EMCO, in collaboration with the SPC, in the RRF process (for a detailed
discussion, see Vanhercke and Verdun 2022).
Whether this means that these committees, and by extension the EPSCO
Council formation, will be able to have a real impact on the new governance
architecture remains to be seen. In a joint opinion (May 2021), both advisory
committees made it clear that ‘the National Reform Programmes should
remain the relevant reporting tool for structural reforms and progress towards
CSR implementation, while the assessment tool of RRPs implementation
29. The EPSCO Council formation, in November 2020, called on the Commission ‘to propose
appropriate arrangements for the return to a fully-edged European Semester process as
soon as possible, including its governance’ (Council of the EU 2020: §19).
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24 WP 2021.13
should be fully integrated in the Semester process’ (EMCO and SPC 2021:
4–5). Arguably, the abovementioned new methodology for reporting social
spending will provide these committees with further leverage to get a foot in
the door of the RRF.
The role of the Commissioner for Jobs and Social Rights (Nicolas Schmit)
and his administration – DG EMPL, previously a key player in the Semester’s
‘Core Group’ of four European Commission DGs (Zeitlin and Vanhercke 2018)
– seems to have been signicantly pruned, at least formally. Commissioner
Schmit is not on the Steering Board of the European Recovery Plan, leaving his
cabinet formally removed from access to the internal work of the Commission
on this dossier.30 Several of our interviewees refer to this relative side-lining
of DG EMPL, especially in the initial months, to explain the considerable
decline in social stakeholder consultations (see Section 4).
Key respondents across the Commission, however, conrm that, in practice,
SECGEN and DG ECFIN are working in close cooperation with their
counterparts in DG EMPL – for example, in the ‘RECOVER ECFIN Country
Teams’ made up (despite their name) of Commission ocials across dierent
DGs. DG EMPL also participates in the ‘technical’ bilateral meetings with the
Member States, even if these are chaired by counterparts from RECOVER or
ECFIN. The reason is quite straightforward: DG EMPL’s country intelligence
on social policy and labour market issues is needed to assess the signicant
‘social’ parts of Member States’ RRPs. Whether this kind of cooperation will
be eective, and whether DG EMPL can re-establish its voice in the process,
will largely depend on the ad hoc monitoring and implementation of the RRF
during 2021 and beyond. DG EMPL’s know-how in managing EU cohesion
policy (through the European structural and investment funds, ESIF) should
give the Social Aairs directorate additional leverage over the RRPs. Under
Article 28 of the RRF Regulation these are indeed being negotiated (between
the Commission and the Member States) in a coherent package (in terms of
planning and execution) that includes, among other things, the European
Regional Development Fund (ERDF), the European Social Fund (ESF) and
Cohesion Fund Operational Programmes.
30. The Steering Board is made up of the three Executive Vice-Presidents – Margrethe
Vestager, Valdis Dombrovskis and Frans Timmermans – and the Commissioner for
Economy, Paolo Gentiloni.
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25WP 2021.13
4. Stakeholder consultation under the
RRF: the glass half-empty
The RRF is designed to be a ‘bottom-up Member State led instrument’
(interview COM5), dierent from past nancial assistance programmes. As
a result, the importance of the involvement of both EU and national social
stakeholders is often emphasised, especially with regard to achieving ‘lasting
solutions’ (interview COM5), which can be achieved only if real ownership is
created. This squarely raises the question of the involvement of social partners
(business and labour), as well as civil society stakeholders, in all stages of
planning, implementation, and monitoring of RRF spending.
4.1 Formal consultation of stakeholders: the RRF
Regulation as a landmark
The Commission’s ASGS 2021 stipulated, in rather general terms, that it
‘will be crucial that Member States engage as soon as possible in a broad
policy dialogue including social partners and all other relevant stakeholders
to prepare their recovery and resilience plans’ (European Commission
2020b: 13). Similarly, the European Commission’s initial RRP guidance
(European Commission 2020c: 33) of the same date invites the Member
States to ‘describe any consultation and contribution of social partners, civil
society and other relevant stakeholders, in the drafting and implementation
of the recovery and resilience plan’.
Under pressure from the European Parliament’s rst reading of the Regulation,
the nal adopted RRF Regulation goes considerably further, requiring:
for the preparation and, where available, for the implementation of the
recovery and resilience plan, a summary of the consultation process,
conducted in accordance with the national legal framework, of local
and regional authorities, social partners, civil society organisations,
youth organisations and other relevant stakeholders, and how the
input of the stakeholders is reected in the recovery and resilience
plan (European Parliament and Council of the EU 2021: Article 18 (q)
emphasis added).
These requirements contrast with the more general stipulations regarding
stakeholder consultation applicable to the European Semester since 2011.
Regulation (EU) No. 1175/2011 on the strengthening of the surveillance of
Bart Vanhercke and Amy Verdun with Angelina Atanasova, Slavina Spasova and Malcolm Thomson
26 WP 2021.13
budgetary positions and the surveillance and coordination of economic
policies (European Parliament and Council of the EU 2011) merely stipulated
that ‘relevant stakeholders, in particular the social partners, shall be involved
within the framework of the European Semester, on the main policy issues,
where appropriate, in accordance with the provisions of the TFEU and
national legal and political arrangements’ (Article 2-a, point 4).
The European Parliament, in its rst reading, had proposed even more
precise guidelines for the required RRP stakeholder consultation. A new
paragraph 2 was proposed under Article 15 which specied that: ‘A Member
State wishing to receive support under the Facility shall establish a multilevel
dialogue, in which local and regional authorities, social partners, civil
society organisations, in particular youth organisations, and other relevant
stakeholders and the general public are able to actively engage and discuss
the preparation and the implementation of the recovery and resilience plan’
(EP 2020). Furthermore, the European Parliament proposed that the draft
plan be submitted to these instances ‘for consultation before the date of
submission to the Commission and social partners shall have at least 30 days
to react in writing, in accordance with the principle of partnership’ (European
Parliament 2020, Article 15 paragraph 2). To ensure a certain quality of
consultation with domestic stakeholders, the European Parliament had thus
suggested a minimum period in which the consulted social partners would
have the time to react in writing to the national RRP. The European Parliament
also proposed, in terms of format, that at the request of the stakeholders, their
opinions could be attached to the RRPs, as well as the details, ‘including the
relevant milestones and targets, of the consultations and dialogues planned in
relation to the implementation of the recovery and resilience plan’ (European
Parliament 2020, Article 15, paragraph 3, point (i)).
Although these ambitious proposals were considerably watered down in
the subsequent stages of the negotiations with the Council of the EU, both
the German Presidency of the Council of the EU, as well as the European
Parliament, as a co-legislator of the RRF Regulation, played important
roles in ensuring that – at least on paper – stakeholders would be heard in
the RRPs (interviews MEP1, NOF5). The requirements set out in the RRF
Regulation (Article 18 (q)) go well beyond the abovementioned 2011 Semester
Regulation in two important ways. First, Member States are not only asked
to provide ‘a summary of the consultation process’, but also to report on
‘how the input of the stakeholders is reected in the recovery and resilience
plan’. Second, while the 2011 Regulation lists only the ‘social partners’, the
RRF Regulation considers a much broader group of stakeholders, which
now also includes local and regional authorities, civil society organisations,
youth organisations and other relevant stakeholders (European Parliament
and Council of the EU 2021). Our interviewees pointed out that, even if the
practical eects of the con sultation clause in the RRF Regulation so far seem
strictly limited (also be cause it was not an assessment criterion of the RRPs),
it should be considered an important step forward. The clause may indeed
provide legal grounds for social stakeholders to obtain involvement in the
monitoring and implementation of the RRP (interviews BUSINESS, ETU1,
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27WP 2021.13
ETU2, ETU3, CSO1), even if others raise serious doubts in this respect (CSO2,
CSO3).
These consultation requirements are indeed ‘more than has been achieved
du r i ng t he Sem es te r’ (i nt e rv ie w ET U2), a lth ou gh op p os it io n fr om bo t h C o un ci l
and Commission prevented a stronger formulation of this requirement. Thus,
the RRF Regulation (Article 18 (q)) refers to consultation ‘in accordance with
the national legal framework’. In addition, the emphasis is on consultation
during the preparation of the RRPs: when it comes to their implementation,
a summary of the consultation process is required only ‘where available’. At
the same time, the language is exible (for example, the way in which the
consultation should be organised is left open) and enables a mix of speed
and tailoring to dierent national circumstances: not all Member States have
equally institutionalised roles for social partners and other stakeholders
(interviews BUSINESS, COM9, ETU1, ETU3). Whether this new clause in
the RRF regulation will have practical eects will in part depend on the
government structures, as well as the pre-existing channels available to social
partners and other social stakeholders for inuencing the dierent stages of
the European Semester cycle (for a discussion of these Semester channels of
inuence, see Sabato 2020).
4.2 Stakeholder involvement in practice: far from
satisfactory
Using this new opportunity, the ETUC began to inform its aliates about
the most appropriate ‘entry points’ in the RRF for national trade union
organisations; it upgraded its ‘Semester Toolkit 2.0’ with a ‘Real Time
Monitoring Tool (RTMT)’, which keeps track of trade union involvement
in the drafting and implementation of RRPs31 and ‘names and shames’
inadequate trade union involvement in the RRP drafting by national
governments (e.g. Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia were flagged32).
Several EU-level civil society organisations (for example, Civil Society
Europe33, ERGO Network34, the European Social Network35 (ESN) and
31. ETUC Real Time Monitoring Tool (RTMT): https://est.etuc.org/index.php. The ETUC drew
up an initial list of countries in which, based on experience in the Semester, there is a risk
that trade unions will not be involved in the RRF. ETUC will actively support these countries.
32. ETUC Recovery & Investment website: https://est.etuc.org/?page_id=42
33. Guidance notes for civil society organisations to engage with national authorities on the
preparation of the EU National Recovery and Resilience Plans, December 2020.
https://civilsocietyeurope.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Guidance-Note-for-CSOs-to-
engage-with-the-National-Recovery-and-Resilience-Plans_updated-1.pdf
34. Available at: https://ergonetwork.org/2021/02/support-note-on-engaging-with-the-
national-recovery-and-resilience-plans-nrrps-2021/
35. ESN replaced its Semester Reference Group by an EU Funding Working Group and
organised meetings between its members and the European Commission: it was felt that
this was the way the Commission would engage, in view of its interest to nd out what was
happening nationally.
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28 WP 2021.13
Eurodiaconia36) followed a similar approach, producing guidance notes
for their national members and partners, with a view to enhancing their
understanding of the RRF and the procedures to follow, and encouraging
their proactive participation. The involvement of these EU-level civil
society organisations (CSOs) themselves in the RRF process seems to have
been minimal: ‘our consultation has been non-existent, ad hoc in places,
occasionally strong but mostly weak’ (interview CSO1). Another respondent
conrms: ‘at the EU level, I don’t think that there was any engagement with
civil society […]. I don’t think there has even been an attempt to pretend as if
we were involved’ (interview CSO2). This is conrmed by another respondent:
‘only when we knocked on the door to highlight the concerns of our members,
the Commission attended meetings. It seemed that they wanted to gain
information from our members as to whether [and how] they were being
involved in the national RRF process’ (interview CSO3). Several factors
can explain the lack of civil society organisation involvement in the RRF:
the compressed timeframe, the relative side-lining of DG EMPL combined
with the lack of well-established ties (especially compared with corporatist
actors) with SECGEN and ECFIN, and the many procedural changes that
occurred in the 2021 Semester cycle. Other explanatory factors are that social
dialogue has stronger institutional foundations than civil dialogue, and the
limited capacity (human resources) of civil society organisations to engage
meaningfully in the process. Moreover, the process of planning the RPPs has
taken place mainly at the domestic level, leaving less leverage to EU-level
umbrella organisations to have their say (interviews CSO1, CSO2, CSO3).
It will be important to establish whether the timespan between the rst
formulation of RRPs and their ocial submission (as of April 2021) has
eectively provided a window of opportunity for social and economic actors
to engage with the content of the draft RRPs (thereby increasing the political
price of not following such stakeholder involvement). The ETUC (2021) has
already announced that, despite the formal progress made, it will continue
to advocate a binding rule for more structured consultations, looking
towards a long-awaited reform of the EU’s economic governance. As several
of our interviewees highlight, the consultation process has been largely
predetermined by the existing culture of consulting the social partners (at
least in some Member States), and to a lesser extent civil society organisations
(interviews NOF5, CSO1, CSO2, CSO3). This situation occurred in part
because the consultations took place in a context of ‘crisis management’,
where speedy action to tackle the consequences of the pandemic was of the
utmost importance.
The involvement of national social stakeholders in the 2021 Semester cycle,
and therefore their overall impact on the RRF, will most likely be strictly
limited. Drawing on an EU-wide survey (January 2021), the European
Economic and Social Committee concluded that formal RRP consultation
36. Available at: https://www.eurodiaconia.org/2021/05/national-recovery-and-resilience-
plans-where-are-the-roma/
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29WP 2021.13
processes with the social partners and civil society organisations have indeed
taken place: while some mechanisms are new, ‘Member States have also used
and built on mechanisms established for consultation within the ordinary
European Semester procedure’ (4.1.2).37 All in all, however, the EESC
considers that, in most Member States, consultation processes with social
stakeholders ‘are far from satisfactory in relation to the justied demands of
civil society and even in relation to the terms set out in the RRF Regulation’
(EESC 2021 5.1, emphasis added), although it is ‘acknowledged that progress
has been made compared to the usual European Semester procedures’ (ibid
1.8). Unsurprisingly the EESC report also found that ‘the social partners are
included on a more structured, institutionalised and permanent basis whereas
the remaining CSOs are instead consulted in an ad hoc and informal manner’
(ibid 4.2.1), even if some (mostly large) proactive national CSOs (for example,
in Italy, Portugal and Spain, have been able to present themselves as spenders
and thereby secured signicant RRF funding (interview CSO2, CSO3). In a
joint opinion, EMCO and SPC (2021:14) also acknowledge that ‘signicant
concerns remain as regards practical aspects of social partners’ consultation
in terms of transparency, timeliness, and meaningfulness, as well as with
regard to its real impact on policymaking’. Importantly, the disappointment
with the lack of involvement is shared by representatives of business, labour
and civil society organisations. Thus, a vast majority of BusinessEurope’s
member federations in the Member States report that ‘their involvement
in the design of their countries’ national recovery and resilience plans was
somewhat insucient to even extremely limited’ (interview BusinessEurope
2021). The EMCO organised a ‘social dialogue review’ (19 November 2021)
with the involvement of national and European social partners which
discussed, among other things, whether social partners were involved in a
timely and meaningful way in the design and implementation of employment
and social policies.
Several of our interviewees provide initial explanations for these disappointing
results as regards national stakeholder consultation in the RRPs. They
point out that, at national level, prime ministers, nance ministers and
ministers responsible for cohesion policy mainly steer RRP decision-making
politically (while previous National Reform Programmes were largely
bureaucracy-driven). This means that social stakeholders, including civil
society representatives, needed to develop new national and EU networks
– an undertaking that takes more time than was available given the tight
deadlines of the newly created instrument (interviews BUSINESS, COM9,
CSO1, CSO3, EESC, NOF 4, NOF5, TU2). The lack of detailed requirements
for the consultation process, combined with the change of ‘driving seat’ for
the RRF, have severely limited eective consultation, even in countries that
had pre-established avenues for consultation under the European Semester.
37. These mechanisms include submission of written proposals, high-level meetings with
responsible ministers, evaluations of purposely designed and returned questionnaires, and
round table discussions between government representatives and civil society organisations
(EESC 2021: § 4.1.2).
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30 WP 2021.13
4.3 The need for ‘quality’ involvement
Perhaps the most important issue with the RRF consultations so far is that,
even when these took place (seemingly in most Member States, in one form
or another), many doubts can be raised as regards their quality (interviews
EUROFOUND, CSO1, CSO2, CSO3). Key quality concerns include the limited
time available for meaningful consultation, which typically took place at an
advanced stage of development of the draft RRPs. In several cases, social
partners and civil society organisations report that they were included at
some stage (including at the very beginning) of the elaboration of the RRP,
but then they were sidelined during the rest of the drafting process. In other
cases, (too many) meetings were organised with (draft) plans being shared
in advance, but stakeholders usually received no feedback and did not see
how their contributions were factored into the nal plan. Several of our
respondents ag the importance of including both representatives of social
partners and civil society organisations in the RRF consultations. In the
words of one interviewee: ‘If the consultation is focused on social partners, it
becomes employment-focused […] and some groups are left underrepresented’
(interview CSO1, conrmed by CSO3). More generally, the lack of transparent
procedures for involving a variety of stakeholders in national consultations
has become one of the key points for criticism expressed by dierent EU-
level based organisations (CEE Bankwatch Network 2020). This lack of
transparency, in turn, may have made it even more attractive for powerful
industrial lobbyists to seek to inuence the drafting of the RRF Regulation
(interview MEP2), while the European Parliament has recently been
scrutinising the role of the ‘Big Four’ consultancy rms in providing ‘technical
assistance’ to Member States preparing structural reforms.
Based on the Commission assessments of RRPs, a recent ‘in depth’ analysis
of the involvement of stakeholders38 produced by the European Parliament
(2021) conrms that all Member States undertook a public consultation, at
least to some extent, during the preparation of their RRPs. The intensity and
breadth of this consultation varied a great deal, however. The Commission
Sta Working Documents (SWD) on the RRPs uncritically suggest that many
Member States (such as Austria, Belgium, Czechia, Germany, France, Cyprus,
Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Portugal, Greece, Croatia and Slovakia)
report quite an extensive formal consultation process. Fewer Member States,
however, point to specic proposals from stakeholders that are reected in
the RRPs (however, see Austria, Czechia, Cyprus, Germany, Latvia, Portugal
and Slovakia). Arguably, this is why the EMCO and SPC (2021:14) suggest that
‘consulting social partners, governments could also systematically provide
feedback as to how their proposals have been addressed’. Belgium, in addition
to the extensive consultation with stakeholders at federal and regional level,
is one of the few countries which reported consultation on its national RRP
38. Dened as relevant EU level bodies, relevant national, regional and local authorities, social
partners, civil society organisations, youth organisations and other relevant stakeholders, as
per the RRF Regulation.
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31WP 2021.13
with the national gender equality body, namely the Institute for the Equality
of Women and Men.
Preliminary results of ongoing research by Eurofound about eective
national social partner involvement in social dialogue (2021) suggest that
there is no place for too much optimism: generally speaking, there has been
poor involvement of social partners in the drafting of the RRPs, even in
countries with strong social structures. This is the situation, for instance, in
Austria, where social partners have only been marginally involved (Templ
2021). Drawing on interviews (carried out by Eurofound’s network of national
experts) with no less than 143 national social partners and government
representatives, the EU agency found that only four countries record ‘high’
quality involvement (including Spain, where national social partners were
satised with their involvement) and two other countries ‘medium’ quality
involvement of the social partners in the RRF. All other countries, notably,
record only ‘low’ quality social partner involvement (ibid).
Some EU Member States reported in their RRP that they gave the general
public the opportunity to engage in a publicly organised debate: this was
the case in Czechia,39 as well as in Greece, where ‘a series of public events
are being planned to increase the ownership of the Plan’.40 Lithuania
reported strong public interest in the plan: the ‘300 responses received
were considered before submitting the nal plan to the Commission’.41
According to the Council Implementing Decision, in Slovakia, the RRP was
also widely communicated to the general public (but there was no possibility
to see how responses were taken on board, interview CSO3).42 Two important
caveats should, however, be made: (i) neither the fact that the ‘wider public’
has been consulted, nor the fact that many responses were recorded, reveals
anything about the quality of the consultation: and (ii) it is unclear to what
extent the results of these consultations were used to inform the RRPs
(interviews with Eurofound, CSO2, CSO3). Portugal, however, reported a
two-stage consultation process: during the second stage, a broader group of
civil society stakeholders was reached, in response to civil society’s proactive
appeal to the government to hold wider consultations on the RRP (interview
NOF4). In this country, reportedly, changes were made to the RRP following
the second public consultation.43
39. Commission Sta Working Document, Analysis of the recovery and resilience plan of
Czechia, 19.07.2021, SWD(2021) 211 nal. Available at: https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/
default/les/com-2021-431_swd_en.pdf
40. Commission Sta Working Document, Analysis of the recovery and resilience plan of
Greece, 17.6.2021. SWD(2021) 155 nal. Available at: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-
content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:52021SC0155&qid=1625738811353&from=EN
41. Commission Sta Working Document Analysis of the recovery and resilience plan of
Lithuania, 2.7.2021, SWD(2021) 187 nal. Available at: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-
content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:52021SC0187&rid=10
42. Council Implementing Decision on the approval of the assessment of the recovery and
resilience plan for Slovakia, 6.7.2021 2021/0163 (NLE). Available at: https://data.
consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-10156-2021-INIT/en/pdf
43. Leading to two new components: Component 4 (Culture) and Component 10 (Sea).
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32 WP 2021.13
Nevertheless, several of the trade union representatives interviewed for this
study indicated that they felt that EU-level ocials (in the various DGs of
the European Commission) were in fact more receptive to social issues, and
the views of social actors than before. Such consultations were reported to
take place at dierent levels of the European Commission – from the highest
level (the Commissioners themselves) to the country desk ocers (interview
COM9). One trade union representative nds it ‘dicult to remember that level
of involvement of senior Commission sta before, in any previous semester
cycle or physical meeting’ (interview ETU3). Several of them point out that
this change started under the Commission headed by Juncker (see also
Sabato 2020). The online meeting culture of 2020–2021 further facilitated
access and consultations – with a broader range of European Commission
DGs and reaching more senior ocials – which social partner representatives
took advantage of (interviews BUSINESS, COM9, ETU1, ETU2, ETU3). It
should be noted, however, that several of our interviewees suggested that
these outreach eorts and meetings were often lacking in actual content and
did not involve civil society organisations, which were not consulted at all
(interviews CSO1, CSO2, CSO3).
In other words, more work is needed to ensure meaningful involvement of
social partners in policymaking (EMCO and SPC 2021: 14). Stakeholder
involvement in the RRF should be translated into operational practice and
not constitute ‘a kind of ritual’ (interview ETU2; Moschella 2020: 20–21).
Whether and how social stakeholders will become involved in the monitoring
and implementation of the RRF remains to be seen. According to the European
Parliament (2021: 3), some Member States (for example, Denmark, Ireland,
Croatia, Luxembourg and Austria) did not provide any information on how
stakeholders would be involved or consulted during the RRP implementation
stage. Only a few Member States (for example, Belgium, Cyprus, Greece)
made a general commitment to continue to reach out to social partners and
civil society during the implementation phase of the plan. The European
Parliament will have an important role to play in this regard, including in
the context of the newly established ‘Recovery and Resilience Dialogue’ held
every two months between the European Parliament and Commissioners
Dombrovskis and Gentiloni: this will allow for a high frequency of European
Parliament involvement in the process, although the dialogue does not foresee
any binding power for the European Parliament (Crum 2021).
The importance of quality involvement of the social partners and civil society
organisations in the RRF process is a crucial point, alongside the need for
transparency (Open Procurement EU 2021). During the implementation
and monitoring processes, the obvious shortcomings in that regard should
be rectied. As one of the policymakers denes the expected impact of the
RRF investment: ‘here there is real money that will lead to real investment
for many years, so we need to give this ownership’ (interview COM5). High
quality involvement of a wide range of stakeholders will ‘ensure that the
measures foreseen are both economically feasible and socially acceptable’
(BusinessEurope 2021).
From the European Semester to the Recovery and Resilience Facility. Some social actors are (not) resurfacing
33WP 2021.13
At the time of writing, autumn 2021, as the EU overall has reached a rst-
dose vaccination rate of close to 80 per cent (ECDC 2021), and the IMF
(2021a; 2021b) is forecasting a strong recovery following a deep recession,
there may be a return to Semester practices sooner than initially expected.
Though this means that social actors will be back at the table, in the run-up
the EU institutional social actors and European social partners have been
more successful than EU civil society organisations and domestic social
stakeholders, who remain largely sidelined in the new process. This result
conrms that the governance processes of the Semester continue to oer
variegated opportunities and resources for strategic agency for contending
groups of actors, also with a view to reshaping pre-existing power balances
(Zeitlin and Vanhercke 2018: 169).
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34 WP 2021.13
5. Of carrots and sticks: hardening the
Semester?
As a result of the linkage between the RRF and the Semester, the latter is likely
to acquire new prominence. The Semester may well fundamentally change
in character, from being a non-binding structure for policy coordination,
to a vehicle for the allocation of major economic impetus (Crum 2020; van
der Veer, 2022; D’Erman and Verdun 2022) with more teeth. As the RRF’s
governance framework, the domestic ownership of the Semester could be
reinforced. This hardening would be achieved by allowing Member States
to identify the relevant targets, milestones and timetables against which
implementation eorts will be assessed, and by providing nancial incentives
for structural reforms (i.e. reforms listed in the CSRs). These developments
have the potential to increase CSR implementation, as the CSRs may be taken
more seriously by Member States and stakeholders alike (interviews COM9,
ETU2, NOF6, MEP1; see also Moschella 2020; Wieser 2020).
Given Rainone’s (2020) nding that the overall number of (implicit and
explicit) 2020–2021 social CSRs is the highest ever registered (around 80 per
cent higher than usual),44 this link with the RRPs should, in principle, provide
the Commission and national stakeholders with a powerful new opportunity
to combine the ‘sticks’ of past CSRs with the ‘carrots’ of signicant funding,
including for social and labour market policies. The RRF thus ‘upgrades’ the
Semester, in that it oers nancial incentives in return for a coherent package
of public investments and (potentially painful) reforms, thereby giving
European governments additional means to overcome domestic institutional
resistance against Semester tools and recommendations. The German trade
union confederation DGB pointed out recently that it felt that, with the new
rules, the principle of ‘money for reforms’ seems to apply, which may further
exacerbate the perceived lack of legitimacy of the EU’s economic governance
(DGB 2021).
As already mentioned, monitoring and implementation of the recovery
plans are coordinated jointly by the Recovery and Resilience Task Force
(RECOVER) within the Secretariat General and DG ECFIN. In addition, the
newly created DG REFORM45 provides detailed technical support – to those
Member States who request it – in drafting, implementing and monitoring
44. The proliferation of social CSRs is likely to be an eect of the EU Commission’s reaction to
the socioeconomic crisis triggered by Covid-19 (Rainone 2020: 4).
45. In January 2020, DG REFORM took over the mandate previously held by the Structural
Reform Support Service established in 2015 within SECGEN.
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35WP 2021.13
the RRPs, including through the promotion of scaling up existing policies and
exchange of best practices, both among and within Member States (interviews
COM8, COM11). It could be asked whether these bodies have the technical
capacity and human resources to organise monitoring and implementation,
also in view of the risk of political pressure on the Commission; there may
be signicant pressure to record positive implementation (Wieser 2020: 8).
Given that EMCO, the EPC and the SPC have become signicant players in
monitoring, reviewing and assessing national reforms within the Semester
(Zeitlin and Vanhercke 2018), it would seem important to include them in
the monitoring eort, alongside the EFC. The inclusion of these players
may assist the Commission in its task of monitoring milestones and targets
(including judging whether sucient progress has been made to warrant
payment) in the RRP. In a joint opinion, the EMCO and SPC (2021:6) leave
no doubt about the role they envisage for themselves: ‘the role of EPSCO and
its advisory bodies in the Semester process should be maintained in line with
past Semester cycles and in full application of the Treaty (Article 148 TFEU)
and the respective mandates of the two committees [… ]’.46
Scholars have warned against rushing through the RRPs needlessly, risking
waste and misdirected long-term investment: good projects are hard to nd
quickly, and national governments have limited capacity to channel very large
amounts of public investment (Alcidi et al. 2020; Alcidi and Corti 2021). As
Van der Veer (2022) reminds us, scrutiny of spending and reform plans is
far from apolitical and therefore cannot be done in a mechanical way: by
funding certain investments and reforms, and not others, the EU will get, in
the words of one of our interviewees, ‘under the skin’ of the Member States,
which may be ‘extremely complicated’ to manage (interviews COM5, COM6).
The risk, also in the absence of a clear negotiation mandate, is that the EU will
become tangled up in national political discourse – especially when reform
conditionality (i.e. reforms are demanded in order to obtain loans or grants)
is being applied to sensitive policy domains – while it cannot account for the
consequences of the reforms.
As the autumn of 2021 draws to a close, not all Member States have submitted
their recovery and resilience plans, even though the target date was the end
of April 2021. Early assessments of these plans (in terms of their contribution
to ‘green’, ‘digital’ and ‘other’ spending) are not even very easy to make, as
so many dierences appear in the plans (for instance, Darvas et al. 2021).
Furthermore, not all countries have taken advantage of the funding: the
Netherlands held o submitting its plans due to ongoing government
formation and, as we saw above, Bulgaria was also very late to submit.
Nevertheless, the European Commission has indicated that it will be exible
46. EMCO and SPC (2021:6) also underline that the cooperation between EPSCO advisory
committees and other Council preparatory bodies, notably the Economic Policy
Committee (EPC), the Education Committee (EDUC) and the Council Working Party on
Public Health at Senior Level (WPPHSL) should be further strengthened in the context
of a comprehensive Semester process. They also recall the need to ensure continued
involvement of Social Partners and Civil Society Organisations.
Bart Vanhercke and Amy Verdun with Angelina Atanasova, Slavina Spasova and Malcolm Thomson
36 WP 2021.13
and that Member States are permitted to submit these plans till the middle
of 2022. Furthermore, the EU needs to decide how the Semester will be used
as a system of macroeconomic governance. This year the timing has been
aligned. But, especially as the exceptional situation may be coming to an
end (European Commission 2021b), and economic growth may be returning
to normal in the near future, the EU institutions will need to decide how to
reintroduce the usual deadlines and procedures, thereby marking the gradual
end of the exceptional period – although the autumn IMF World Economic
Outlook still mentions ‘the continued grip of the pandemic on global society’
(IMF 2021b: xiii). Indeed, assuming some normalisation, scholars have also
started to wonder what role there might be for national parliaments going
forward (Bekker 2021; Woźniakowski et al. 2021).
From the European Semester to the Recovery and Resilience Facility. Some social actors are (not) resurfacing
37WP 2021.13
Conclusion and next steps
This report aims to evaluate socio-economic governance in the EU in
response to the Covid-19 crisis. Although the ECB was the rst to react,
heads of state or government took forceful, relatively speedy and certainly
unprecedented decisions to tackle the economic and social consequences
of the pandemic. Although new ways were used to attract large amounts of
funds in the nancial markets, some of the older institutional structures
were also deployed. In particular, to manage the RRF the European Council
opted to use some of the existing institutional structures, namely the EU
budget, but also the Semester. We argue that the Semester was used as a
foundation partly because of its ‘Goldilocks’ characteristics (that is, the rules
and recommendations are not too soft and not too hard: they are ‘just right’).
From our research we learned that the EU actors did not wish to reinvent
the wheel, as the Semester was already doing what the Commission and the
EU Member States wanted to keep doing in the future: to provide annual
assessments and recommendations for reform. During the pandemic the
choice fell on linking them back to previous CSRs (for now). In choosing to
rely on this macroeconomic policy coordination instrument, it did not seem
to matter that many assessments of the Semester suggest low compliance
with its recommendations, in part because of the limited enforceability.
Firmly embedding the RRF into the Semester framework and having more
carrots and sticks may, down the road, increase Semester eectiveness, as
it becomes a ‘harder mode of soft governance’ (see, among others, Knodt et
al. 2020). Despite the increased potential of the Semester, and the possible
empowerment of the Commission, however, Member States have also gained
opportunities. Through the national reform programmes and stability or
convergence programmes, they may seek support for specic domestic needs.
Also, the role of the Council of the EU and the European Council regarding
impact is not yet clear. Thus, in terms of the inter-institutional division of
power, the study has found that the jury is still out as to who, in the end, will
gain or lose most in terms of inuence.
In this report we also sought to examine the extent to which the linkage
of the RRF to the Semester might fundamentally change the latter – given
the creation of a larger budget and the various requirements for using the
funds. We examined the path that led to the RRF, including its link with the
Semester. In terms of the actors involved in the process, our assessment is
that initially there was a serious risk that institutional EU social actors were
losing some of the prominence they had previously earned in the Semester.
Their role was, again, not taken for granted when the RRF was launched: at
Bart Vanhercke and Amy Verdun with Angelina Atanasova, Slavina Spasova and Malcolm Thomson
38 WP 2021.13
this early stage, much of the emphasis was on speed and reducing the number
of actors involved. In the course of the process, from late 2020 until the
summer of 2021, some of these actors were reclaiming their position in the
evolving architecture, especially as the immediate urgency subsided. Notably
EU institutional social actors have gradually moved back to adopting the
former Semester practices: they stayed in position, ready to jump in at the rst
opportunity. EU civil servants were also willing to engage with social partners
(both sides of industry), taking advantage of the online meeting opportunities
provided by Covid-19. EU civil society organisations, by contrast, have been
largely sidelined in the RRF process. Similarly, in most Member states,
consultation with domestic stakeholders (both social partners and CSOs), has
remained insucient by any standards.
The European Parliament was reasonably successful in securing its
substantive impact during the RRF negotiations. But it has since failed to
insert itself in the approval and assessment procedures of the EU’s recovery;
the question is whether its clear wins will be enough to alter the place of the
European Parliament in the EU’s economic governance and the Semester, in
which so far it has played only a marginal role (Verdun and Zeitlin 2018).
The growing inuence of the Semester, through its coupling to the RRF, thus
brings to the fore some dormant democratic accountability issues. Given that
the RRF is part of the EU’s nances, and hence subject to the joint nancial
authority of the European Parliament and the Council (Crum 2020:14),
several authors have proposed measures to increase accountability to the
European Parliament. The latter might obtain a larger role in providing
political guidance to the RRF, thereby installing proper parliamentary
control and oversight of the EU’s budgetary authority (Crum 2020; Moschella
2020; Wieser 2020). The deeper involvement of the European Parliament
would increase the transparency and accountability of the process. Stronger
democratic credentials would benet not only national policy makers but
also EU institutions (Commission and Council), which could improve project
delivery and thus benet the recovery (Wieser 2020).
The place of the social dimension in the RRPs and the inuence of the EU
are linked to a variety of factors and are essentially country-specic. In the
absence of quantied social targets in the RRF regulation, the Commission
will now start monitoring how money is tagged to reforms and investments
linked to children, young people and gender, thus giving itself a certain
role ensuring that money will be really and properly spent on reforms and
investments targeting these groups. More research is needed into the details
of the drafting of the RRPs and into potential EU inuence on the place of the
social dimension. But we should not forget that the process is highly dynamic
and that implementation of the plans has only just begun. Ownership of the
plans and identifying the directions for further development of the respective
EU Member States has proven to be a key issue.
Time will tell whether the EU is ready to seize this opportunity to further
democratise the EU polity in this way, and to enhance the inclusion of
various societal actors in these important processes. Making soft modes of
From the European Semester to the Recovery and Resilience Facility. Some social actors are (not) resurfacing
39WP 2021.13
governance harder, strengthening the role of the European Parliament in the
oversight and guidance of the Semester and the RRF would enable a further
reinforcement of democratic processes and increased legitimacy for the EU.
Such dynamic changes are even more important at a time when the European
Commission has announced the relaunching of the European Semester with
the 2022 cycle. This renewed use of the Semester will include the ‘standard’
autumn package, resumed publication of Country reports, Country-specic
recommendations covering emerging challenges not dealt with by RRPs, and
new bi-annual National Reform Programmes integrating reporting on RRPs
and the EPSR (including the setting of national social targets,47 following the
Porto Social Summit) (SECGEN 2021). The 2022 Annual Sustainable Growth
Strategy (ASGS) will outline the governance framework of the upcoming
European Semester cycle. This new framework will likely entail a move away
from the one-size-ts-all Semester of the past decade, in view of the fact
that the RRF means very dierent things, in terms of budgets and timelines,
for dierent countries. One can only hope that the ASGS 2022 contains the
necessary guidance to Members States, allowing social stakeholders to seize
their legitimate place in the RRF.
47. At the time of writing (mid November 2021), 13 Member States had submitted initial
proposals for national targets, while some have shared preliminary analysis.
Bart Vanhercke and Amy Verdun with Angelina Atanasova, Slavina Spasova and Malcolm Thomson
40 WP 2021.13
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Appendix 1
Interview details
This report relies on extensive document analysis, as well as 32 semi-
structured elite interviews with as many dierent respondents between
October 2020 and November 2021 (most of them conducted jointly by
Bart Vanhercke and Amy Verdun). We conducted ve interviews with two
respondents (rather than a single interviewee) and ve follow-up interviews
with the same respondents (conducted at the beginning and end of this one-
year period). As can be seen in Table 1, most of them are in senior positions
(such as director, secretary general, chair, confederal secretary, head of unit,
principal advisor or rapporteur) in their organisations. Interviews lasted 45
minutes, on average, ranging between 35 and 80 minutes.
The respondents work in dierent Directorates General (DGs) of the European
Commission (DG ECFIN, EMPL, REFORM and SECGEN) and the Cabinet
of Commissioner Nicolas Schmit, as well as with European social partner
organisations (BusinessEurope, the European Trade Union Confederation
(ETUC) and the European Public Service Union (EPSU)) and European
civil society organisations. Other interviewees have institutional roles in the
European Parliament (as (co-)rapporteur), the European Economic and Social
Committee, the Employment Committee (EMCO), the Social Protection
Committee (SPC), the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living
and Working Conditions (EUROFOUND), national (employment or social
aairs) administrations or the permanent representation of their country to
the EU.
All interviews took place through online video conference programmes (for
example, Teams, Zoom). Many of them were recorded (with the consent of
the interviewees) and transcribed. Each interview has been given a dedicated
code, to which we refer in the body of the text, as appropriate. We used
abbreviations to reect the general institutional aliation of the respondents,
while guaranteeing anonymity. The abbreviations are as follows: BUSINESS
(BusinessEurope), COM (European Commission), CSO (Civil Society
Organisation), EESC (European Economic and Social Committee), EMCO
(Employment Committee), ETU (European Trade Union), MEP (Member of
the European Parliament), NOF (National Ocial) and SPC (Social Protection
Committee).
From the European Semester to the Recovery and Resilience Facility. Some social actors are (not) resurfacing
47WP 2021.13
Table 1 Interview details (in chronological order)
Code
EMCO1
COM1
ETU1
NOF1
(National Ocial)
COM2
COM3
NOF2
NOF3
COM4
COM5
ETU2
COM6
EMCO2
SPC1
ETU3
COM7
BUSINESS
MEP1
COM8
COM9
NOF4
MEP2
NOF5
COM10
EESC
COM11
NOF6
NOF7
EUROFOUND
CSO1
CSO2
CSO3
Date
20/10/2020
21/10/2020
23/10/2020
28/10/2020
17/11/2020
18/11/2020
9/12/2020
26/0 1/ 2021
12/02/2021
5/03/ 2021
10/03/ 20 21
17/ 0 3/2 0 21
18/03/ 20 21
01/04/2020
11/0 5/2 0 21
17/ 0 5/ 2 0 21
21/05/2021
25/0 5/2 021
09/06/ 20 21
23/0 6/2021
24/06/2021
30/0 6/2021
05/ 0 7/ 2 021
10/09/2021
14/09/2021
20/09/2021
27/ 0 9 /2 0 2 1
30/0 9/2021
26/10/ 2021
26/10/ 2021
27/ 1 0/ 2 0 2 1
18/ 11/ 2 021
Position
Member
Head of Unit
Head of Institutional Policy
Advisor
Policy ocer
Advisor
EU advisor
Former Chair
Member
Advisor
Confederal Secretary
Head of Institutional Policy
Director
Member
Secretary
Member
Policy ocer
Head of Unit
Director
Member
Head of Unit
Director
Counsellor
Attaché
Member
Director
Advisor
Principal administrator
Member Group II, Workers
Advisor
Director
Policy advisor
Alternate Financial Counsellor
Research Manager
Secretary General
Senior Policy and Advocacy Ocer
Director
Chief Executive Ocer
Institutional aliation
Employment Committee (EMCO)
DG EMPL, European Commission
European Trade Union Confederation
Federal Public Service Social Security, Belgium
DG EMPL, European Commission
DG ECFIN, European Commission
Dutch national parliament
Eurogroup
Cabinet of European Commissioner Nicolas Schmit
DG ECFIN, European Commission
European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC)
DG ECFIN, European Commission
Employment Committee (EMCO)
Social Protection Committee (SPC)
European Public Service Union (EPSU)
DG EMPL, European Commission
BusinessEurope
European Parliament
DG REFORM, European Commission
Recovery and Resilience Task Force (RECOVER), Secretariat
General, European Commission
Permanent Representation of Portugal to the EU
European Parliament
Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Aairs, Germany
DG ECFIN, European Commission
European Economic and Social Committee
DG ECFIN, European Commission
Ministry of Social Aairs and Employment, the Netherlands
Permanent Representation of Portugal to the EU
European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and
Working Conditions
Platform of European Social NGOs
European Federation of National Organisations Working with
the Homeless
European Social Network
No.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
Bart Vanhercke and Amy Verdun with Angelina Atanasova, Slavina Spasova and Malcolm Thomson
48 WP 2021.13
Acknowledgements
Funding was provided by the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI), the
Austrian Chamber of Labour (AK EUROPA) (ETUI Code No. 2051-215-31/2151-
015-21), the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the
Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union, Jean Monnet Network, ‘The
Politics of the European Semester: EU Coordination and Domestic Political
Institutions (EUROSEM)’ (Agreement number: 600110-EPP-1-2018-1-CA-
EPPJMO-NETWORK) (Grant agreement No. 2018-1359).
The authors wish to thank, for generously giving their time and generously
sharing their views, the key informants of 32 semi-structured interviews.
Special thanks to Sebastiano Sabato for his expertise about stakeholder
involvement and EU governance, and to Pietro Regazzoni (University of
Milan) for his research assistance.
Earlier versions of this report were presented at a workshop of the Jean
Monnet Network, ‘The Politics of the European Semester: EU Coordination
and Domest ic Pol itica l Inst i t utions (EUROSE M )’, co - h o sted by the Journal for
Common Market Studies on 7–8 January 2021 (JCMS virtual workshop, co-
hosted by EUROSEM); at virtual workshop #11, ‘The Politics and Economics
of EU Macroeconomic Policy Coordination: from the European Semester
to the Recovery and Resilience Facility’, 3–4 June 2021, (Nederlandse
Politicologenetmaal, co-hosted by EUROSEM); and during a webinar
organised by the ETUI, AK EUROPA, the European Social Observatory (OSE)
and ÖGB Europabüro, 7 September 2021. The authors would like to thank
the participants, and in particular the formal discussants at these three
events: Muireann O’Dwyer (University of St Andrews), Aleksandra Maatsch
(Uniwersytet Wroclawski, Wroclaw), Norbert Templ (Austrian Chamber of
Labour Vienna), Sotiria Theodoropoulou (ETUI), Benoît Lallemand (Finance
Watch) and Jonathan Zeitlin (University of Amsterdam), as well as ve
anonymous reviewers, for constructive feedback and detailed suggestions on
earlier versions. The usual disclaimer applies.
13
Working Paper 2021.13
From the European
Semester to the
Recovery and
Resilience Facility
Some social actors are (not)
resurfacing
Bart Vanhercke and Amy Verdun
With Angelina Atanasova, Slavina
Spasova and Malcolm Thomson
European
Trade Union Institute
Bd du Roi Albert II, 5
1210 Brussels
Belgium
+32 (0)2 224 04 70
etui@etui.org
www.etui.org
D/2021/10.574/31
ISSN: 1994-4446 (print version)
ISSN: 1994-4454 (electronic version)
