The Recovery and Resilience Scoreboard describes itself as giving “an overview of how the implementation of the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) and the national recovery and resilience plans is progressing.” That sentence is the correct starting point for any audit of what the RRF has done for care and skills, because it defines the artefact’s scope. The Scoreboard is a monitoring instrument, not an evaluation instrument, and the distinction matters when figures from it are promoted into “gender milestones.”
The RRF entered into force in February 2021 and will disburse up to €573 billion in grants and loans to EU Member States. Its plans were endorsed by the Commission and the Council, and all data displayed on the Scoreboard is based on those 27 endorsed plans. The Scoreboard is used to prepare the Commission’s annual reports on RRF implementation and the review report to the European Parliament and the Council, and it serves as a basis for the Recovery and Resilience Dialogue between the European Parliament and the Commission. Its framing choices therefore travel into the vocabulary of subsequent parliamentary debate.
Two data layers, two legal instruments
The Scoreboard contains two types of information, and they are governed by different legal instruments.
The first is data collected by the Commission in the context of monitoring plan implementation. This consists essentially of data reported by Member States on the fulfilment of milestones and targets, and of information on disbursements. It also includes Commission-developed data such as expenditure per policy pillar and social expenditure, calculated in accordance with the methodology adopted under Delegated Regulation (EU) 2021/2105.
The second is data collected by Member States on the common indicators. The list of common indicators and their definitions were agreed by the European Parliament, Member States and the Commission in Delegated Regulation (EU) 2021/2106. Member States report on the common indicators twice a year, by 28 February and 31 August, with the first reporting taking place in February 2022.
These two layers answer different questions. The common indicators track progress on specific actions common to all or most plans. The social-expenditure figures are estimated costs assigned to social categories. Neither layer, on its own, tells a reader whether a care or skills commitment has produced a gendered outcome.
What the social and gender figures are
The Scoreboard publishes a set of social figures. On average, Member States have dedicated around 25% of their RRF funds to supporting social objectives. The share of social expenditure is based on estimated costs of RRP measures assigned by the Commission, in consultation with Member States, to social categories defined in Delegated Regulation (EU) 2021/2105. The Scoreboard breaks these down across four social categories: employment and skills; education and childcare; health and long-term care; and social policies.
Separately, the Commission has identified measures with a focus either on children and youth or on gender equality in the endorsed plans. In total so far, Member States have put forward 415 measures with a focus on supporting children and youth and 123 measures with a focus on gender equality.
Those two numbers — 415 and 123 — are the figures most often cited in “gender milestone” discourse. The Scoreboard’s own text places a caveat directly beneath them: “Figures are illustrative, meant to be used for qualitative analysis, and do not constitute a comparative assessment of Member States’ RRPs.” The same passage notes that the number and structure of the measures in each national plan vary greatly, as does the approach to reflecting commitments to gender equality or contributions to children and the youth.
That caveat is not boilerplate. It is the Commission stating the epistemic status of the figures. A count of measures identified as gender-focused is a classification output produced through Commission–Member State consultation under a delegated regulation. It is not an outcome measure, and it is not a disbursement measure.
Three layers that get conflated
Discussion of RRF gender performance tends to merge three distinct things.
The first is expenditure shares by social category, calculated under Delegated Regulation (EU) 2021/2105. These are estimated costs, assigned by category, and they answer a question about planned allocation.
The second is counts of measures tagged as gender-focused or as focused on children and youth. These are classification outputs, and the Scoreboard itself labels them illustrative and non-comparative.
The third is milestones and targets whose fulfilment triggers payment requests. These sit in the RRF Regulation and in the Council implementing decisions for individual Member States, and they are the operative trigger for disbursement.
Only the first two are visible in the Scoreboard text retrieved for this analysis. The third layer — the payment-request layer — is not established by that material. The payment-requests page of the Scoreboard was not retrievable at the time of writing, and this article therefore does not assert what those scoreboards show about care and skills milestones. That is a limit of the evidence, not a finding about the data.
Keeping the three layers separate is a precondition for any honest audit. A measure count and an expenditure share are not interchangeable, and neither is a milestone.
Why a measure count is not a milestone
Consider a hypothetical illustration, clearly labelled as such. Suppose two Member States each tag ten measures as gender-focused. In one plan, those ten measures are small-budget items. In the other, a single large-budget measure carries most of the tagged weight. The measure count is identical; the expenditure implication is not. This is precisely why the Scoreboard publishes expenditure shares and measure counts as separate charts rather than collapsing them into a single index.
The methodological point follows. A measure count is a tagging outcome produced under a delegated regulation, not an outcome measure. Treating it as a gender milestone converts a classification exercise into an apparent performance metric. The Scoreboard’s own caveat — illustrative, qualitative, non-comparative — is the correct status for the figure, and promoting it past that status is an upgrade the underlying methodology does not support.
There is a further consequence. Because the Scoreboard is an explicit input to the Commission’s annual reports, to the review report to Parliament and Council, and to the Recovery and Resilience Dialogue, its framing choices are not neutral. They shape the vocabulary in which the RRF’s social and gender performance is subsequently debated. A figure labelled illustrative in the Scoreboard can reappear in debate as a headline count.
Where the audit should sit
If the payment-request layer is where disbursement is triggered, that is where the audit of care and skills commitments properly sits. The relevant documents are the Council implementing decisions for individual Member States, which contain the milestones and targets, and the operational arrangements that accompany them. Those are the instruments that determine whether a payment request is satisfied.
The Scoreboard’s social-expenditure methodology under Delegated Regulation (EU) 2021/2105 and its common-indicator methodology under Delegated Regulation (EU) 2021/2106 are the instruments that determine how measures are classified and how progress is reported. Reading them alongside the Council implementing decisions is what allows a reader to move from a count of tagged measures to a statement about what has actually been paid.
For the standing audit line on the European People’s Party political family, the productive question is therefore not “how many gender measures did the RRF produce.” It is which design choices — the scope of the delegated regulations, the Council endorsement of individual plans, the weighting of the policy pillars — the family supported. That question cannot be answered from the Scoreboard alone. It requires roll-call and statute evidence that was not retrieved for this analysis, and no claim about EPP positions on RRF governance is made here.
What a reader can and cannot conclude
From the retrieved Scoreboard material, a reader can conclude that around 25% of RRF funds were on average dedicated to social objectives; that 415 measures were identified as focused on children and youth and 123 as focused on gender equality; that these figures are illustrative and non-comparative by the Commission’s own statement; and that the social categories and common indicators rest on two distinct delegated regulations.
A reader cannot conclude from that material that the 123 gender-focused measures correspond to a particular euro amount, a particular Member State, or a particular policy area, because the retrieved text does not disaggregate them. A reader cannot conclude that those measures have been disbursed, because the text describes them as identified in endorsed plans, not as paid. A reader cannot conclude that the figures have improved or worsened over time, because no time series is given.
Those limits are the point. The size of the gap between what the Scoreboard publishes and what “gender milestone” discourse claims is the finding. Precision about which instrument governs which figure is what makes the gap visible.
FAQ
Does the Scoreboard show how much money went to gender equality measures?
No. The retrieved Scoreboard text gives a count of 123 measures identified as focused on gender equality, and separately gives social-expenditure shares by category under Delegated Regulation (EU) 2021/2105. It does not state a euro amount attached to the 123 measures.
What is the difference between Delegated Regulation (EU) 2021/2105 and Delegated Regulation (EU) 2021/2106?
Delegated Regulation (EU) 2021/2105 defines the social categories used to calculate the share of social expenditure. Delegated Regulation (EU) 2021/2106 sets the list of common indicators and their definitions, on which Member States report twice a year by 28 February and 31 August.
Are the 415 and 123 figures comparable across Member States?
The Scoreboard states they are not. Its text says the figures are illustrative, meant for qualitative analysis, and do not constitute a comparative assessment of Member States’ RRPs, and that the number and structure of measures vary greatly between plans.
Where are the milestones that trigger payments recorded?
In the Council implementing decisions for individual Member States and the accompanying operational arrangements. The payment-requests page of the Scoreboard was not retrievable for this analysis, so no statement is made here about what it shows.
What would be needed to audit EPP-family positions on RRF gender provisions?
Roll-call records and statute evidence on the family’s positions regarding delegated-regulation scope, Council endorsement of plans, and pillar weighting. No such source was retrieved for this article, and no claim about those positions is made.
