The Recovery and Resilience Facility and Its Effects on the Rule of Law Conditionality: A (Potentially) Well-Functioning Connection

This chapter aims to highlight how the RRF—viewed as an innovative Euro-national procedure for using financial resources intended to trigger national reforms and investments according to a new “method of government”—interacts with the implementation of the “Rule of Law Regulation”. According to Article 8 of Regulation No. 2021/241, compliance with the (then just approved) Rule of Law Regulation (No. 2020/2092), required during the implementation of the National Recovery and Resilience Plans, constitutes a significant and often overlooked element of this new “method of government”. This is an element that, as will be discussed, strengthens the conditionality already embedded in this Regulation and is capable of having a meaningful impact in ensuring more effective protection of the Rule of Law, especially in problematic Member States (MS), such as Poland and Hungary, whose Plans require the achievement of crucial and Rule of Law-related “Super-milestones” as initial steps of their implementation.