Abstract
Fiscal Integration in an Experimental Union: How Path-Breaking Was the EU's Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic?
Highlights
The Covid-19 pandemic could not have started worse for the EU (Herszenhorn and Wheaton, 2020)
The flagship Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) recognizes that a preventive fiscal capacity is required to shield and support the Euro Area (EA)’s most vulnerable members. This is in stark contrast to the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), which handed out cheap rescue loans only once a government was shut out of bond markets, and imposed intrusive prescriptions for fiscal policy and institutional reforms, overseen by the Troika
This subsequently changed the political economy of Covid-19, the public relations debacle of the Commission’s vaccine procurement and the slow roll-out of the immunization programme in member states continued to test political unity
Summary
The Covid-19 pandemic could not have started worse for the EU (Herszenhorn and Wheaton, 2020). The flagship Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) recognizes that a preventive fiscal capacity is required to shield and support the EA’s most vulnerable members This is in stark contrast to the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), which handed out cheap rescue loans only once a government was shut out of bond markets, and imposed intrusive prescriptions for fiscal policy and institutional reforms, overseen by the Troika. I provide evidence that the legacy of failure in the EA crisis spurred attempts by major protagonists to break with a path that they saw as politically disastrous for the EU polity as a whole This should surprise any long-term observer of EU affairs. The last section outlines how we can understand path-breaking in the EU polity theoretically
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