The Commission’s NRPP proposal seeks to preserve core features of the Cohesion Policy Funds (regional and local authority involvement under shared management) while drawing on RRF innovations (integration of reforms and investments, performance-based disbursement linked to milestones and targets). • The proposed governance model and oversight regime is a potentially credible hybrid. But some modifications are needed to ensure fairness and comparability in Commission assessments of national Plans, secure meaningful stakeholder participation throughout the policy cycle, and develop effective monitoring systems that support learning and adaptability without imposing excessive administrative burdens. • The Commission's proposals address many criticisms of the RRF and CPF through explicit assessment criteria for milestone and target fulfilment; ex-ante payout values per milestone and target; clarified provisions for recovering unjustified payments; and stakeholder-based Monitoring Committees to review implementation and approve amendments to operations. • But major unresolved problems remain, notably: the absence of a definition of what constitutes addressing 'all or a significant subset' of EU recommendations to Member States; the effectiveness of the proposed 'regional test' in ensuring genuine stakeholder participation; ensuring Monitoring Committees’ capacity to oversee national and regional Plans effectively; and ensuring that performance indicators are genuinely useful in monitoring NRPPs in real time. • The NRPPs are more flexible than the RRF and the CPF, featuring smoother disbursement systems; easier Plan revisions based on 'reasoned requests' without requiring demonstration of changes in 'objective circumstances'; a Mid-Term Review leading to mandatory submission of amended Plans; a new EU Facility to support rapid responses to crises and emerging Union priorities. • Verifiability and auditability are strengthened compared to the RRF through clarified assessment criteria and transparent ex-ante payout values. But the multi-tiered Single Audit approach creates new challenges that will require national audit authorities, the Commission, and the European Parliament to develop expertise in assessing performance information alongside traditional cost-based audits. • The 500+ mandatory common indicators proposed by the Commission are unlikely to provide a satisfactory solution, since most are primarily output-focused and do not provide evidence of intervention effects. Effective ‘diagnostic monitoring’, aimed at detecting and correcting problems in real time, would require a more robust set of programme- and project-specific indicators reflecting intervention logics and expected outcomes. • The NRPPs enhance inclusiveness compared to the RRF through the structural embedding of the partnership principle and the involvement of local actors in Plan design, implementation, monitoring, and revision. Yet inclusiveness could be enhanced, for example, by requiring Member States to publish outline proposals for stakeholder involvement in the Plans at each stage of the process. • The proposed governance model and oversight regime has the potential to improve transparency and accountability by enabling the European Parliament to build on the Commission’s oversight of national audit authorities, ECA investigations, and extensive mandatory information provision on the Plans and their implementation. But transparency could be further enhanced by requiring publication of Monitoring Committee discussions and reports of annual review meetings. Source : © European Union, 2026 - EP Read more