The main element of the EU’s Recovery Plan (NextGenerationEU) is the Recovery and Resilience Facility (€672.5 billion), which is made up of loans and grants that will be given to Member States to mitigate the pandemic’s impact and to help build more sustainable and resilient economies and societies. Member States are in the process of designing their draft recovery and resilience plans, which have to be submitted to the European Commission by April 2021 in order to obtain funds.

The €750 billion NextGenerationEU instrument together with the €1.074 trillion seven-year EU budget (for the period 2021-2027) amount to a total package of over €1.8 trillion. This was agreed by EU leaders last July. Although the European Parliament called for more money to be made available for programmes in areas like research and health, in November it agreed with the German rotating presidency of the Council of the EU on an extra €15 billion for these purposes, thus settling the final details of the recovery plan. The different parts of the package now have to be endorsed by the Parliament and the Member States.