The EU Recovery Plan: bouncing back better together towards a green, digital and resilient Europe. What are the opportunities for Belgium?

This article highlights what the European Semester, the annual coordination cycle of economic, employment and social policies of Member States, stands for, with an emphasis on how it has evolved over time (part I). The diagnosis by the European Commission services of the economic dimension of this unprecedented crisis is also summarised (part II). We will then set out the contours of the economic response the Commission has proposed, i.e. an EU Recovery Plan, as amended and validated by all 27 EU Leaders on 21 July 2020 (part III). We focus on the backbone of this plan – the Recovery and Resilience Facility - which is to radically increase the European Semester’s relevance in driving the socio-economic repair and recovery of the European economy (part IV). We also describe the reform and investment opportunities for Belgium, as identified in the context of the European Semester, that could be part of a Belgian recovery and resilience plan that can help Belgium recover and emerge stronger from this crisis (part V). In a last section, we set out the next steps for the implementation of the EU Recovery Plan as well as our conclusions (part VI).