During the shaping of Romania’s National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), an environment conducive to the creation of institutional arrangements for socio-centric governance was established. However, these arrangements were not enduring and did not have the capability to modify the specific path dependency of state-centric governance arrangements. This research presents and analyse perceptions regarding the extent and manner in which Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) were engaged in the shaping process of Romania’s NRRP. Based on semi-structured interviews with the relevant CSOs, factors that have influenced the involvement of CSOs in shaping Romania’s NRRP in relation to other European fund programming processes, the lessons learned from this process, as well as possibilities of enhancing the current governance regime specific to European funds management were examined.
Keywords: governance regimes, analysis of the policy-making process, Recovery and Resilience Facility