Employment and Social Development in Europe 2022: Initial report on the national Recovery and Resilience Plans
posted on: July 29th, 2022
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Recently EU Member States have submitted a series of national Recovery and Resilience Plans (RRP) describing the actions that Member States (MS) will pursue during the 2021-2026 period within the framework of NextGeneration EU. Following these submissions, the European Commission has published a series of working documents that analyse the current situation regarding Employment and Social Developments in the EU.
The chart below (taken from the working document’s chapter 3, published on July 28) depicts the distribution of the funds that have been allocated to youth related actions, in three categories (Figure 1): One is directly linked to the labour market (Employment Support and Job Creation); the second refers to Education, Training and Research, while the third refers to tangible assets (Education infrastructure and Equipment).
Furthermore, the working document attempts some projections of the expected impact of the RRF funds on employment and growth by 2026 (Figure 2).
The data reported and the projections are indicative of the MS intended policies for the next few years. The allocation of financial resources does not follow a common pattern among MS: as Figure 1 indicates, for Italy, for instance, Employment Support and Job Creation is seemingly not a priority, while Greece seems to “disregard” Education, Training and Research. Still, one should be careful not to jump to conclusions regarding the underfunding of certain actions: the size of the Recovery and Resilience Facility is not comparable to past initiatives and when assessing the provisions for any action we should take into account the absolute numbers as well.
The difficulty of drawing direct conclusions regarding the RRF / RRP allocations and the NEXT GENERATION EU scheme in general, is also evidenced by the data specifically concerning the proportions of youth-related measures among MS. There, it is clear that some countries acknowledge a need to implement more targeted measures, while others may consider that young people’s problems will be better addressed through more general developmental policies (Figure 3).
Given the diverse local conditions and the turmoil caused by international developments, the national and regional authorities that will be responsible for the plans’ specifications and their implementation need to do some thorough work in order to exploit to the maximum the potential of the available funding.
Figure 1. Mix of measures’ categories varies across Member States. Youth-related measures categories
Source: JRC, TEDAM calculations
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Figure 3. Youth-related measures, % of RRP
Source: JRC, TEDAM calculations
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Figure 2. Employment impact of youth-related RRF measures in 2026
Source:JRC, TEDAM RHOMOLO simulations
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Full report:
COUNCIL OF THE EUROPEAN UNION, SWD(2022) 193. COMMISSION STAFF WORKING DOCUMENT EMPLOYMENT AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENTS IN EUROPE 2022 Chapter 3. Brussels, 26 July 2022
Available from: https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-11598-2022-ADD-3/en/pdf