Description
The Covid-19 pandemic has set economies of member states under heavy financial pressure, member states have therefore set up Covid-19 economic rescue plans for different sectors of the economy. The European Union has meanwhile installed a Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF), meant to damper the effects of this widespread crisis, which has affected not only the hospital and care sector, but has led to lay-offs or forms of short-term work across member state economies and other countries. The RRF has been installed and member states have set up plans how to tackle the most pressing problems societies face today. Within the RRF, an evaluation for each member state is planned which is closely linked to the European Semester in the future. Some authors argue to involve the European Parliament (EP) more closely in the process of the RRF since the comitology procedure would lead to developments already perceived as undemocratic in the European Semester. The Council and EP should be involved in the process to guarantee a more democratic procedure based on national parliaments representations to assure that the RRF spending hits its targets. Since the RRF is designed to a quick fiscal stimulus and safeguard national economies from unexpected shocks in the future, the outline of the RRF is considerably different than normal Structural Fund payments to member states which have a much longer-term catch-up effect. The paper will investigate into exemplary member states engagement in this respect and which sectors of the economy consider gender+ relations and if the funding includes the targets set.
