Political positioning of Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) discourse – The loss of green objectives

Abstract

Although decarbonisation and sustainability goals are marked in the post-COVID-19 and polycrisis recovery efforts of all European Union Member States, the communication space around the issue is still fluid. In this paper, we use natural language processing and text-mining methods to map key EU-level actors’ discourse regarding green transition and the recovery fund. We collect the social media posts of European Parliament members, key representatives of national governments, and relevant institutes (like European Commission Directorate-Generals) from 2019 to 2023. We use Large Language Model-based classification and topic modelling to identify the main discourse frames, present the dynamics of the issue evolving, and map how different actors participate in the debate. Our approach makes it possible to understand how the energy and climate policy and recovery dialogue were developing within the European political space. Our results show that the green transition theme in the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) was almost entirely lost by 2021 after its initial low profile. It has given way to purely political and legal debates, and raising funds from the Member States has also become central to the RRF theme. The political parties, as were ENVIs and DGs on the policy communication levels, were responsible for this. The RRF has been placed in the public space not by focusing on and further promoting the green transition but by making it the arena for economic recovery and political debates.