Seminar series The European semester pre- and post- Next Generation EU (NGEU) Add to calendar 2025-11-12 12:30 2025-11-12 14:00 Europe/Rome The European semester pre- and post- Next Generation EU (NGEU) Sala Triaria Villa Schifanoia YYYY-MM-DD Print Share: Share on Facebook Share on BlueSky Share on X Share on LinkedIn Send by email Scheduled dates Nov 12 2025 12:30 - 14:00 CET Sala Triaria, Villa Schifanoia Organised by Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies EGPP: European Governance and Politics Programme Join Igor Guardiancich as he analyses how the Recovery and Resilience Facility transformed the EU’s economic coordination through incentive-based conditionality The European Semester has long been the EU’s central instrument for coordinating economic and fiscal policies. Its effectiveness in steering national reforms was limited in the pre-COVID era, when enforcement relied mainly on soft coordination and weak sanctions. The launch of the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) under the Next Generation EU (NGEU) marked a turning point, embedding the Semester within a framework of incentive-based conditionality tied to unprecedented EU funding. This presentation examines how the Semester has evolved across these two phases, pre- and post-NGEU, and whether the shift from sanctions to financial incentives has strengthened compliance with Country-Specific Recommendations (CSRs). It also considers the legal-institutional, macroeconomic, political, and sectoral factors shaping implementation. The reflection draws on two original quantitative studies: one tracing long-term shifts in compliance, the other using evaluation differentials to assess the impact of RRF funding in the post-NGEU era.