EU recovery funds: a new Marshall Plan for Europe after the pandemic?

Abstract

This chapter looks at the European Union’s recovery funds from an economic and critical perspective. The aim is to find out whether their design, distribution, and implementation will help EU countries emerge from the pandemic crisis. To this end, we will look at the design and implementation of the funds to try to understand how they actually work and who will ltimately benefit from them. We will also reflect on the problems and contradictions that accompany them. The conclusion, necessarily tentative given the incipient stage of development of this initiative, is that it is not a sufficient tool to solve the serious problems plaguing the working class in the EU. On the contrary, these funds constitute a strategy aimed at rescuing big usiness through a massive transfer of resources that will surely lead to a new wave of austerity, the social and economic consequences of which could be dramatic.