EUROPE'S RECOVERY PLAN AND THE CRITERIA OF THE ALLOCATION THE RECOVERY PLAN FUNDS AMONG EU COUNTRIES

In 2020, the European Union reacted to the coronavirus crisis in an unprecedented way which has affected Europe and the world.The base is a stimulus package worth EUR 2.018 trillion in current prices (EUR 1.8 trillion in 2018 prices).It consists of the EU's long-term budget for 2021 to 2027 of EUR 1.211 trillion (EUR 1.074 trillion in 2018 prices), topped up by EUR 806.9 billion (EUR 750 billion in 2018 prices) through NextGenerationEU.This initiation represents a temporary instrument to power the recovery of EU countries.The funds are being used to address the most important challenges facing Europe and support those in need.In the aftermath of Russia's aggression on Ukraine, the EU budget was mobilised to provide emergency assistance and support, in Ukraine and in the EU countries, and to alleviate the humanitarian consequences of the war.The allocation of the grants was based on criteria set by the European Commission.It has been divided on a seven to three basis for the period 2021 to 2022 and for 2023.In this context, the aim of our work is to present the current status of the Recovery Plan for Europe with regard to the Recovery and Resilience Facility and to analytically assess, using OLS regression analysis, the criteria adopted for the distribution of the funds of this Facility.We investigate whether other criteria related to the economic situation may be related to the amount of grants received by EU countries.The results of the work show that more funds were allocated to countries with higher population, higher unemployment rates and higher loss in real GDP.