BUSINESSEUROPE Reform Barometer 2021 - Ensuring national recovery and resilience plans deliver investment and reform

The 2021 BUSINESSEUROPE Reform Barometer was published on 11 June. Given the exceptional year we have had, this year our Reform Barometer draws on our member federations from across the EU to provide an assessment of the National Recovery and Resilience Plans (NRRPs) submitted to the European Commission by Member States, as part of the NextGenerationEU instrument.

• In the first chapter of this report, we first analyse the impact on the economy of the past 12 months and, as in the spirit of our previous reform barometers, we consider how the EU economy has responded to such challenges in comparison to other major economies.
   
• In the second chapter, we present the views of our network of leading business federations across Europe, assessing both the policy response to the pandemic and the draft NRRPs that Member States have presented to the Commission for assessment and ultimately approval by the Council.

The EU economy has undergone the deepest fall in economic output since the Great Depression due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with the impact even more severe than in other large economies. In particular, the EU economy fell by 6.3% in 2020, compared to 3.5% in the USA and an increase of 2.3 % in China, and is set to bounce back more slowly. There is a risk that Europe will fall behind economically as a result of the pandemic. As the overall macro-economic response across the EU is likely to have been somewhat smaller than that of the USA, it will be crucial that we ensure that every euro of the national recovery and resilience plans is used effectively by Member States to leverage reform and higher long-term investment.

Against this background it is concerning that, according to our survey, only 11% of member federations consider that the impact of their country’s NRRP will be either large or very large. In addition, more than half of the federations consider that their respective national recovery and resilience plans put insufficient focus on business competitiveness and particularly research, development and innovation.

Detailed assessments by national member federations of the NRRPs submitted to the European Commission can be downloaded from the table below.

Download the full list of assessments.