The European COVID-19 Recovery Plan

The EU's COVID-19 Recovery Plan includes the 750 billion € NextGenerationEU (NGEU) temporary recovery package – the most important instrument of which is the 672.5 billion € Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) – and the 1,074.3 billion € Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) 2021-2027. While the spending structure of the MFF has only been moderately modernised, the NGEU and especially the RRF are explicitly future-oriented: 37 percent of RRF funds are to be used for climate protection, 20 percent for digital transformation. New own resources are to support important European projects in the future: a plastic-based own resource will be added to the existing own resources used to finance the MFF. A digital tax, an own resource based on the EU Emissions Trading Scheme and a carbon border adjustment mechanism, among others, are to contribute to the repayment of the debt taken on for NGEU.