The EU’s Response to the COVID-19 Crisis and the Trajectory of Fiscal Integration in Europe: Between Continuity and Rupture

Abstract

This article offers a first analysis of the EU’s fiscal response to the COVID-19 crisis. Beyond an account of the main initiatives of which it is comprised (the suspension of the Stability and Growth Pact, the Support to mitigate Unemployment Risks in an Emergency (SURE) instrument and the recovery plan), it provides an assessment of this response’s position in, and likely influence on, the long-term trajectory of economic and fiscal integration in Europe. Analysing its main features and the core issues and challenges it raises, it identifies the elements of continuity and rupture which characterize this response, the legacies on which it builds, and the shifts and changes that it embodies. The article shows that, as a policy initiative which in many regards breaks away from past practices and orientations, the EU’s fiscal response to COVID-19 presents novel, disruptive features, which raise new legal questions, and open new avenues for exploration. It also reveals that next to clear elements of rupture, this response is also largely embedded into the wider, pre-existing policy framework of EU economic governance which we inherited from the Eurozone crisis. In many regards, it continues the institutional philosophy of that system, and perpetuates the main constitutional challenges that it raises. European Union, COVID-19, fiscal response, recovery plan, transformations, legacies