• eurobarometer
• european values study
• gender gap
• next generation eu
• policy. knowledge
• political interest
• recovery and resilience plan

Prior to the NextGenerationEU (NGEU), The European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) was the most significant of the Structural Funds of the European Union in terms of budget and range of thematic priorities. This Master Thesis explores the Gender and Geographical differences in policy knowledge, making the first, up to date, general assessment based on the Recovery and Resilience Plan and its implications on policy knowledge. Using repeated cross sectional Eurobarometer surveys from 2017 to 2023 and employing a Linear Probability Model, it is tracked the evolution of gender differences in policy knowledge across seven target countries: Italy, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Poland and the Netherlands. It is found that the knowledge of the policies to tackle the economic crisis in the aftermath of Covid-19 has increased substantially over the years, narrowing the Gender gap in policy knowledge and its implications for what concern policy effectiveness. Beside this, in this dissertation it is investigated the Interest in politics and the confidence in European institution and own National Government using the European Value Studies. Thus, the results show that wealthier target countries’ citizens (Germany, Netherlands) have more political engagement, even after controlling for fixed effects.