The 🇩🇪 presidency proposes to have the Council instead of the @EU_Commission approve national Recovery and Resilience Plans to unlock RRF money; 🇳🇱 even wants unanimity for this and cites the ESM as an example (h/t @florianeder).

Here is why this is a really dumb idea:
1/ The reason behind this push for a stronger Council role ostensibly is to ensure that funds are not handed out too freely and that in programme times, the Eurogroup proved to be quite tough - through the troika - on programme countries. So why not do it again?
2/ The political damage this arrangement did to the fabric of the Union aside - the RRF is just very different from a programme setup. *Every member state* will want to tap its share. Even the Dutch, where their share is worth about one year of EU budget contributions.
3/ Hence we are not in programme territory, but in the peer pressure zone. And we know one thing from the experience with the fiscal rules: Peer pressure 👏does 👏 not 👏work. If everyone depends on everyone else's approval at the same moment in time, it especially does not work.
4/ This is why unanimity would be particularly damaging. Imagine a situation where, for the sake of argument, the PM of 🇭🇺 wants to channel some RRF money to his cronies. But everyone around the table depends on his consent for their share. What do you think will happen?
6/ This by the way would also include a veto right for the Council (which it technically already has under the current Commission proposal). But just increasing massively the clout of the Council without bringing the EP into the game has nothing to do with better control.
7/ Instead, it would just weaken the Commission vis-à-vis member states and would give member states more freedom to do whatever they want with the money. This is surely not what @minpres, @sebastiankurz and friends want. Yet, this is exactly what they would achieve.
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