The Recovery Fund: the EU's New Quasi Fiscal Capacity and the Social Network Perception

The objective of this paper is to provide a first overview of the financial and regulatory profiles of the common debt instruments contained in the European Recovery Plan and, at the same time, to offer an interpretation of the first results, in terms of media and social network reactions. As a response to the strong economic impact of the pandemic, in May 2020, the European Commission has proposed a new European Emergency Temporary Recovery Instrument, “Next Generation EU”. The proposal is based on the extension of the Budgetary Policy foreseen in the Union’s Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) which, for the period 2021-2027, would be reinforced by resources from the Recovery Fund for a total amount of € 750 billion. By integrating the potential of the European budget through the issuance of debt securities on the financial markets on behalf of the EU, the instrument will make it possible to support the measures deemed necessary and strategic for the recovery of the Member States. The results of the empirical analysis show several implications with which this paper contributes to enrich the initial literature on the topic. The first is the significant gap that exists between the adoption of an institutional approach that for the first time gives the EU a “quasi fiscal capacity” and the perception, given by the Social Network Analysis, far below the expectations that such an innovative institutional regulation would make consequential.