Catching up with the European Union’s recovery and resilience agenda: green transition reforms in the Italian National Recovery and Resilience Plan

ABSTRACT Drawing on Europeanization and policy change scholarships, and with the aim of understanding the extent to which Next Generation EU has become a vector of policy change in the country, this article analyses policy reforms concerning the ecological transition, which Italy has designed within the framework of its National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP). More specifically, the study provides a descriptive analysis of the two versions of the plan (Conte’s proposal and Draghi’s final version) in order to unveil the nature and direction of policy change embedded in particular in its final version, as compared to previous Italian ecological policies. The empirical research presented in the article shows that the logics of path-dependence and policy layering have prevailed in the design of the green pillar of the NRRP, as it introduced a limited number of policy reforms; lacked specific implementation targets, and was developed in conformity with a highly fragmented and top-down style of policy making: one that was typical of previous Italian environmental and climate policies.