Recovery and Resilience Facility: A Costly Mistake That Must Not Be Repeated

Brussels 21/05/2025 - After the European Parliament (EP)'s Economic (ECON) and Budgetary (BUDG) Committees voted on the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) implementation report, Patriots for Europe issued a strong warning: in reality, the RRF has not lived up to its promises. MEP Enikő Győri, the economic spokesperson of Patriots for Europe and MEP Julien Sanchez, the budgetary spokesperson of Patriots for Europe stated: “The RRF was designed and adopted as a one-off instrument to promote quick recovery for the European economy after Covid. Its model has proven ineffective, unaccountable, and opaque. It must not be used as a template for future EU funding.”

RRF has not been transparent: "It is simply surreal to see in the report that while the European Court of Auditors states that it is not clear what citizens actually get for their money, the groups from EPP to The Left call for more EU level taxes to repay the cost of RRF and finance new performance-based instruments. Therefore, the Patriots for Europe firmly reject new proposals for joint EU borrowing or new EU taxes (so-called ‘own resources’) to repay the debt incurred under the RRF.

RRF had also proven to be ineffective: "Despite disbursing nearly €310 billion, it has delivered only on 30% of the planned milestones and targets so far, according to the European Commission’s own figures. Funds were earmarked even when reforms were incomplete or poorly verified — with little to no transparency on final recipients. "

"On the other extreme, Brussels has been withdrawing funds due to political reasons in case of certain Member States. Milestone assessments have no objective standards, deadlines, right to appeal against the Commission's decision has not been guaranteed. This makes the system ripe for abuse and selective enforcement. Furthermore, it is also unacceptable that the report wants to give power to the European Parliament in designing national plans. It is the highest level of hypocrisy to apply rule of law conditionality to Member States, when the Commission and the Parliament completely disregards the treaties We, Patriots will continue to fight for efficient, transparent, and responsible EU spending. Europe deserves funding that works, not experiments that fail.