The European Commission: Change in a Time of Crises?

Abstract

There are few precedents for the multitude of policy and political crises currently facing the European Union, and particularly the European Commission. The Commission was imbued from its earliest days with a number of administrative features, organizational values, and inter-institutional routines that are now under pressure. Crises ranging from migration to finance, and from Brexit to terrorism, are challenging the status quo. How is the Commission changing as the result of this onslaught of crises? Are its internal norms and organizational values – generally ‘hard-wired’ towards more integration – taking new shape? How are inter-institutional dynamics changing in expected and non-expected ways? This panel will explore these question – ones of great import as the international liberal order comes increasingly under threat.