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 jointly and in a coordinated manner to one of the worst social and economic crises in our history and to help repair the damage caused by the pandemic. With these funds, post-COVID-19 Europe must be 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 Resilience and Recovery Mechanism
Recovery Assistance for Cohesion and the Territories of Europe (REACT-EU)
The Resilience and Recovery Facility is a new Fund under direct EC management. Its resources are grants and loans, and each Member State draws up its Recovery Plan to programme them.
On 30 April 2021, the Spanish government presented its Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan, which envisages 69.5 billion euros in subsidies and which was positively assessed by the European Commission on 16 June.
The Spanish Plan is structured in ten lever policies (including the sixth lever policy "Pact for science and innovation and reinforcement of the National Health System"), which are divided into 30 components. The Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities is responsible for Component 17 "Institutional Reform and Capacity Building of the National Science, Technology and Innovation System" with an allocation of more than EUR 3.4 billion from the Recovery and Resilience Mechanism.
