In May 2021, after a contentious process, the Czech government adopted the national Recovery and Resilience Plan (RRP), with significant changes relative to previously released drafts. Throughout the process, civil society actors have criticized the lack of opportunities for effective participation. Overall, we find that the measures included in the plan, with investments of €7.9bn, can make a positive contribution to the green transition, though there are several specific shortfalls.
Green Spending Share
We find that Czechia’s recovery plan (RRP) achieves a green spending share of 25%, below the EU’s 37% benchmark. Furthermore, we find that 15% (€1.1bn) may have a positive or negative impact on the green transition depending on the implementation of the relevant measures, illustrating the importance of further scrutiny during the further planning, review and implementation of the recovery measures. According to the government, the plan’s climate spending share is 37% (see page 5 of the full country report for more details).
Our calculation of the green spending share aims to mirror the approach used for the official assessment of national recovery plans (find more information here).
*Our analysis covers the Recovery and Resilience Plan presented in May 2021. It was written by Tomáš Jungwirth and Jan Svoboda (AMO) and Felix Heilmann (E3G). We are grateful to David Nemecek (ISFC), Jan Skalik and Anna Karnikova (FoE CZ), Simon Batik (CDE) and Magdolna Prantner (Wuppertal Institute) for providing valuable inputs.
The Czech RRP allocates dedicated funding to important parts of the green transition, such as residential energy efficiency measures, biodiversity measures and climate adaptation. Nonetheless, the ultimate contribution of these measures will also depend on the specific targets and milestones that will be defined for their implementation, which have to be aligned with clear standards in order for the measures to make a very positive contribution.
There is no clear strategic vision guiding the use of the additional funding through the EU Recovery and Resilience Facility. With regards to the green transition, the RRP’s relevant components are not strongly linked to each other or to an overarching framework, and do not sufficiently take EU-level dynamics regarding the implementation of the European Green Deal into account.
Early drafts of the recovery plan included funding for the regeneration and use of public areas (brownfields), a measure that could also contribute to the green transition if the investments are used to increase the areas’ adaptive capacity and to allow for the development of renewable energy and sustainable mobility projects. These measures were, however, removed in the version presented to the public in April 2021, only to be re-introduced into the version of the plan that was ultimately adopted by the government in May 2021.
This dashboard provides a detailed overview of the allocation and assessment of measures by sector for:
Czech Republic
This list provides a full overview of all recovery measures. Our detailed report contains a deep dive on the most important recovery measures and how we assess them. The report can be downloaded below.
