Policy Brief 68 - Parliamentary scrutiny of the Recovery and Resilience Facility: Checking past performance, or shaping the future?
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Executive Summary
The Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) gave the EU a new way to finance national reforms and investment through common borrowing and payments tied to agreed milestones and targets. Its scale and strategic importance make effective democratic oversight essential. Yet the European Parliament’s public dialogues with the Commission have generally provided limited scrutiny of past decisions and performance.
This study examines all 15 Recovery and Resilience Dialogues held between May 2021 and April 2024, alongside 212 written parliamentary questions submitted during the 2019–24 term. Most oral questions sought information; demands for justification or changes in the Commission’s conduct were much less common. Around one in five questions explored future policy options. The dialogues therefore served an information-sharing and agenda-shaping role, while remaining a weak accountability mechanism in their own right.
Institutional constraints help explain this pattern. Speaking time is limited, and Parliament relies on the Commission for much of its information about national implementation. Nevertheless, several publicly documented problems could have faced more probing questions: payment delays, revisions of national plans, lower-than-expected loan demand, limited cross-border cooperation and weaknesses in measuring long-term results.
Written questions add a different form of scrutiny. They are often more specific, addressing individual projects, milestones and transparency concerns. More than 60 per cent were submitted by MEPs who had not spoken in the public dialogues. Assessing accountability therefore requires considering these questions alongside Parliament’s implementation reports and its RRF Working Group. The working group’s closed meetings also limit what external researchers can assess.
The policy lesson extends to the next EU budget, particularly if it follows the RRF’s performance-based model. Parliament should prepare more probing questions in advance, enable Commissioners to provide substantiated answers and systematically follow up across its oversight instruments. A budget intended to reward performance needs public scrutiny capable of identifying underperformance and pressing for corrective action.
IEP Bocconi does not express opinions of its own. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors. Any errors or omissions are the responsibility of the authors.
