Delivering Structural Reforms through the Recovery and Resilience Facility Case Studies from Slovenia

Iris Larmi, Roberto Sigismondo, Peeter Soidla and Zenon Kontolemis

No 255, European Economy - Discussion Papers from Directorate General Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN), European Commission

Abstract: Slovenia has one of the fastest-ageing populations in Europe, creating severe risks for long-term fiscal sustainability, labour supply and the adequacy of the social protection system. Despite recurrent Country Specific Recommendations from the EU urging action, essential structural adjustments remained stalled for years due to domestic political inertia and a lack of social consensus. This paper presents three case studies in Slovenia—the pension reform, the long-term care reform, and the public administration modernisation —to analyse how the EU Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) acted as a catalyst in breaking long-standing national legislative deadlocks.By examining these three case studies, this paper argues that the RRF’s unique governance model including its performance-based approach of linking financial disbursements to the achievement of milestones and targets, and bundling legislative reforms with investments, provided a political momentum to accelerate implementation. Furthermore, the social dialogue helped improve the feasibility of the reforms. Specifically, the RRF enabled Slovenia to establish a new long-term care system, adopt a comprehensive pension reform ensuring adequacy and fiscal sustainability, and modernise the public sector wage system. Ultimately, the paper concludes that the RRF’s value extends significantly beyond the fiscal stimulus of investments as it functioned as a tool allowing national authorities to deliver complex and long-awaited structural reforms.

JEL-codes: E61 E62 E65 H11 H51 H55 J14 J26 J45 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 40 pages
Date: 2026-07
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://economy-finance.ec.europa.eu/publications/ ... -studies-slovenia_en (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:euf:dispap:255

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in European Economy - Discussion Papers from Directorate General Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN), European Commission Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ECFIN INFO ().