What can we already say about its impacts?
The answer is frustratingly simple: not as much as we would like. Five years after the RRF was launched, separating its effects from everything else that happened to the European economy during that time – such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the energy crisis and the inflation shock that overlapped with its implementation – is exceptionally difficult. Just as quantifying the real economic and social impact of the reforms and investments.
In fact, a proper ex-post evaluation of the facility, as planned by the European Commission, is not due until 2028 – this is when we will have access to some hard data on the RRF real impact.
Still, the evidence available so far suggests that the RRF did provide a meaningful economic boost to the EU economy. A recent IMF study concludes that the additional spending stimulated demand, supported economic activity and jobs, with stronger effects in countries receiving larger allocations. The IMF estimates that the annual GDP effect on EU economies was at roughly 0,3-0,8%, depending on assumptions about implementation and spillovers between EU economies.
The European Commission’s own expectations were somewhat higher. Its modelling suggested that NextGenerationEU investments – around 90% of which came through the RRF – could leave EU GDP up to 1.4% higher in 2026 than it would have been without the programme. But this is not directly comparable with the IMF estimate: the Commission measured the level of GDP against a hypothetical Europe without NGEU, rather than the programme’s annual contribution to growth.
And there is a second reason to resist a premature verdict. Some of the experiment’s most important effects may not be visible yet. The RRF worked differently from traditional cohesion funds, where governments incur costs and subsequently seek reimbursement. Under the recovery facility, payments were triggered by fulfilling agreed milestones and targets. That means a country receiving 70 or 80%of its RRF allocation does not necessarily mean that an equivalent amount has already been spent in the real economy.
And that’s not all: building railways or electricity grids can boost demand immediately, but their effect on productivity emerges only once they are operating. Structural reforms may take even longer. The IMF therefore argues that a substantial part of the RRF’s growth impact could materialise only as investment is completed and its longer-term effects work through the economy.
However, there are already some eye-catching numbers that help explain why Brussels is keen to present the RRF as a success.
According to the European Commission, by mid-2026, around 35.5 million people had benefited from RRF-backed education and training measures, including 12.6 million young people. The money was apparently used to modernize classrooms for more than 4.1 million pupils and students – though apparently not enough of them in France, judging by the protests we are currently witnessing over exactly that issue.
The European Commission says that RRF investments had also increased the annual capacity of new or modernised healthcare facilities to more than 63 million patients.
The numbers become even bigger when we look at what national recovery plans are expected to deliver once all the investments are completed: around 17000 kilometres of new or upgraded railway infrastructure, some 13000 clean buses and around 60 GW of additional renewable generation capacity. According to the Commission, RRF-backed investments and reforms could eventually cut greenhouse-gas emissions by more than 100 million tonnes of CO₂ equivalent a year.
Does these numbers enough to prove RRF was a success? Not necessarily.
The RRF was supposed to do at least three things at once:
- it was an emergency response to an extraordinary economic shock;
- it was an investment programme designed to accelerate Europe’s green and digital transformation;
- it was an experiment in changing how EU money works: governments were paid for reaching agreed milestones and targets rather than simply reimbursed for eligible expenses.
On the first test, the evidence looks relatively encouraging. Europe’s recovery from the pandemic was remarkably fast. Economic studies generally find a positive growth effect from the RRF, particularly in countries that received larger allocations. And joint EU borrowing may itself have helped by reassuring financial markets at an extraordinarily uncertain moment.
The second and third tests are much harder.
Consider a railway financed by the RRF. We can count the kilometres of track and check whether the project was completed. But that does not tell us whether, ten years from now, businesses are more productive because goods move faster, whether commuters have better access to jobs or whether fewer people travel by car.
The same problem applies to reforms. A government can pass a law and fulfil a milestone. But did public administration actually become more efficient? Did healthcare become more resilient? Did workers acquire skills that improved their employment prospects?
This distinction between outputs and outcomes may ultimately be one of the most important lessons of the RRF.
And this is precisely where national experiences start to diverge.
Perhaps the most useful way to think about the RRF five years on is: we can count what Europe bought and built: trains, renewable capacity, renovated buildings, broadband connections, hospital equipment and thousands of reforms and milestones; we have increasingly convincing evidence that the money supported growth and investment.
But what we cannot yet know is whether it permanently made Europe more productive, more competitive and more resilient.
That verdict will take years.
Paulina Pacuła, EU reporter, OKO.press