The power of semantic flexibility: resilience and cohesion in Sweden’s and Italy’s National Recovery and Resilience Plans

This article critically examines how the concepts of resilience and cohesion are mobilised in the National Recovery and Resilience Plans (NRRPs) of Sweden and Italy, drafted in response to the Covid-19 crisis. Using Critical Discourse Analysis, we explore how these terms–prominent in EU recovery discourse–function not simply as policy objectives but as ideologically flexible signifiers that accommodate divergent national contexts while sustaining a shared European framework. In its NRRP, Italy embeds cohesion within a moral narrative of national rehabilitation, linking it to the historical North–South divide and framing resilience as dependent upon structural reform and solidarity. Sweden, by contrast, employs both terms in a technocratic manner, presenting them as instruments of governance optimisation. Yet at the ideological level, both converge in depoliticising recovery, framing inequality as a technical obstacle rather than a socio-political issue, and legitimising reform agendas aligned with EU priorities. We conclude that the power of resilience and cohesion lies in their ambiguity: they reconcile neoliberal imperatives with social rhetoric, projecting consensus while masking structural tensions in national and EU governance.