This panel will explore the design and implementation of the Next Generation EU programme and the EU Recovery Funds, weighing the positives against the negatives and posing where improvement might be needed. 

The Next Generation EU programme is changing the way the EU finances itself as never had the European Commission borrowed at such large scale and long maturities on financial markets. Meanwhile, several EU Member States (Italy, Greece, Romania, Poland, Portugal, etc) have decided to make the leap of faith and request substantial amounts of concessional loans under the EU Recovery & Resilience Facility counting to overcome their large funding needs post Covid-19 but also a decade of low investment expenditure. 

Based on a wide array of experiences, the panel will explore how NGEU and the EU Recovery Funds should be designed and implemented to 1) better focus on effective, efficient, just and sustainable ways of spending EU and national money for bankable projects, 2) successfully mobilise private sector funding from institutional investors, IFIs and commercial banks and 3) deliver the promised medium to long-term benefits in terms of economic convergence, complexity and higher growth patterns that EU countries can derive from it.

Meet our speakers and chair.

Anthony Bartzokas is Visiting Professor in Practice at the LSE Hellenic Observatory, Associate Professor at the University of Athens and former EBRD Board Director for Greece. 

Dr Frank Neffke is a team leader at the Complexity Science Hub Vienna and Former Research Director of the Growth Lab at Harvard's Center for International Development.

Vedrana Jelusic Kasic is Member of the Management Board of Privredna banka Zagreb in charge of the Corporate and Investment Banking Department, former Partner of Deloitte Financial Advisory Services and former EBRD Director for Croatia, Slovenia, Hungary and Slovakia.

Ines Rocha (@ebrdInes) is EBRD’s Managing Director of Impact & Partnerships. 

Corrado Macchiarelli (@CMacchiarelli) is Visiting Fellow in European Political Economy at the LSE European Institute. He is Research Manager for Global Macroeconomics at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR). He is an Associate Professor (Senior Lecturer with tenure) in the Department of Economics and Finance at Brunel University London.

The LSE European Institute (@LSEEI) is a centre for research and graduate teaching on the processes of integration and fragmentation within Europe. In the most recent national Research Excellence Framework (REF 2014) the Institute was ranked first for research in its sector.

This year the LSE European Institute is celebrating its 30th Anniversary. The European Institute has been at the forefront of study and research on Europe for three decades and will be running a series of special events to mark the occasion.

Twitter hashtag for this event: #LSENGEU