This policy seminar explores the making of the European Recovery and Resilience Plan, a pioneering instrument based on the largest long-term budget in the European Union’s history. Examining this endeavour to “repair and prepare for the next generation”, it will focus on the final stage of policy drafting, when Member States’ prepared their domestic plans to be submitted to the European Commission by the end of April 2021. Those plans are currently under evaluation by the Commission.

Which visions of Europe’s social, economic, and environmental future have been expressed through these plans? How convergent are the priorities contained across Member States’ plans? What are the challenges deriving from the multi-level governance of those funds? How can the difficulties to effectively spend EU funds in former programmes be explained? These questions will be debated by two academics who have been directly involved in the discussions leading to the Italian plan.

Luciano Monti will recast the various elements that contributed to the making of Italy’s plan in the light of his experience in managing European funds. He will also refer to his policy briefs, which were discussed by the Italian Parliament and arguably influenced the policy debate on the mesures targeting youth. Anna Rita Ceddia will comment on those measures through the perspective of Italy’s overall socio-economic agenda.


Speakers:
 

Luciano Monti is Professor of European Union Policies at Luiss Guido Carli in Rome, where he  has been teaching since 1999. He is scientific co-director of the Bruno Visentini Foundation. Author of over one hundred publications on European Union policies, on the enhancement of human capital, in particular that of young people, and on the enhancement of historical and artistic heritage, he is also a writer and essayist. His most recent works include the bestselling essay Thieves of the Future (Luiss University Press 2016), the H24 dystopian novel (Amazon 2018) and the Third Report on the Generational Gap (LUISS University Press 2019), all dedicated to the emerging generation gap. He is also a Board Member of the SNF project “Reversing the Gaze: towards post-comparative area studies”.
 

Anna Rita Ceddia is Researcher and collaborates with the Bruno Visentini Foundation in Rome. She is also Research Assistant in the SNF projects “The Puzzle of Unspent funds” and “Reversing the Gaze”. Her work focuses on the use of EU funds towards strategic and local planning in Italy. She has been working on several projects developed by the LUISS Business School in collaboration of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Italian Agency for Cooperation and Development. She has authored The role of cohesion policy in addressing carbon footprint assessment strategies, approaches and instruments in a multi level perspective (Master Thesis, LUISS 2019).

Moderator:

• Christine Lutringer is Executive Director and Senior Researcher at the Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy

Background documents:

• READ Luciano Monti's policy briefs here and here.

Policy seminar organised in conjunction with the activities of the SNF projects The Puzzle of Unspent Funds and Reversing the Gaze: towards post-comparative area studies.