European Court of Auditors. Special report 29/2026: Use of Recovery and Resilience Facility support in public administration – Some results achieved, but progress in addressing country‑specific recommendations remains limited
The Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) was established in February 2021 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. We audited whether RRF measures strengthened public administrations and addressed the challenges identified in the country-specific recommendations (CSRs). We found that the measures only partly addressed these challenges, focusing mainly on digitalisation rather than structural reforms. Although the completed measures achieved their agreed outputs, only around one third showed significant results, and progress in implementing CSRs remained limited. Furthermore, the Technical Support Instrument had a limited impact in supporting the implementation of RRF reforms in the area of public administration. For the next MFF, we recommend clarifying requirements, assessing implementation risks and strengthening performance monitoring. We also recommend providing earlier, more targeted technical support and strengthening the related monitoring and evaluation.