In the coming years, Europe must spend trillions on climate targets, defence modernisation and technology infrastructure. In the political debates in Brussels this is often portrayed as a burden – costs that we somehow have to bear.

But what if Europe's trillion-euro "problem" is in fact a source of profit? On Thursday 29 January, at a one-day congress devoted to the pandemic Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF), European Union Commission officials set out their position.

According to their figures, the roughly 650 billion euros spent during the pandemic will generate around 900 billion euros of gross economic output over this decade. That means that for every euro invested through the pandemic facility, the return is 1.36 euros. Looking specifically at investment in energy, that figure rises to 1.69 euros for every euro invested. If that is so, then money invested in European Union priorities such as networks and energy would not threaten the sustainability of public debt even if it were financed by borrowing, and would bring in more than it costs.

Another fact revealed at the congress is that Germany and the Netherlands – two wealthy countries that in 2020 objected most loudly to the facility, because they did not want to support weaker economies such as Italy – turned out to be the biggest beneficiaries.

The Netherlands received 4.3 billion euros, while the effect on the economy of the pandemic-response funds invested by other countries brought a total of 13 billion euros into circulation. More than half of that sum came from Spain and Italy.

In Germany, two thirds of the 66 billion euro increase came from the rise in RRF-related orders in neighbouring countries, which mainly benefited the country's currently struggling manufacturing sector.

Not all delegates left the congress convinced that the situation was a positive one. "The impact of the reforms under the Recovery and Resilience Facility is immeasurable," Finnish professor of international European law Paivi Leino-Sandberg told news outlets: "Although it cannot yet be known with any real precision." The professor added that the European officials who carried out the study were "bound by civil service rules to promote the interests of the institutions", and stressed that the event was "a public relations exercise – part of the European Commission's efforts to present the Recovery and Resilience Facility as a success…"