The European Council approved on 21 June 2020 the creation of the NextGenerationEU programme, the largest economic stimulus instrument ever funded by the European Union, in response to the unprecedented crisis caused by the coronavirus.
NextGenerationEU aims to respond in a joint and coordinated manner to one of the worst social and economic crises in our history and contribute to repairing the damage caused by the pandemic. With these funds, post-COVID-19 Europe must become greener, more digital and more resilient to the changes and challenges of the future.
Two new financial resources are being created under the NextGenerationEU initiative:
The Recovery and Resilience Mechanism
Aid for Recovery for Cohesion and the Territories of Europe (OBJECTIVE-EU)
The Recovery and Resilience Mechanism is a new EC Direct Management Fund. Its resources are grants and loans and each Member State draws up its Recovery Plan to schedule them.
On April 30, 2021, the Government of Spain presented its Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan that includes 69.5 billion euros in grants and that on June 16 has been evaluated positively by the European Commission.
The Spanish Plan is structured in ten lever policies (among them the sixth lever policy “Pact for science and innovation and strengthening of the National Health System”) which are concretized in 30 Components. The Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities is responsible for Component 17 “Institutional reform and strengthening of the capacities of the national system of science, technology and innovation” with an allocation of more than 3.4 billion euros from the Recovery and Resilience Mechanism.
