The European Government of Crisis

Over the past decade the EU has faced a multitude of crisis, many of which result from the increased interdependence of markets, economies, and societies. In addition, the furthering of integration of governance systems seems has often created additional challenges, more than it solved problems, creating additional legitimacy challenges, and existential threats to the European Union. The literature has so far pointed out to how crises create existential challenges for the EU, exposing risks of disintegration, cohesion, solidarity. However, specific crisis arrangements have been much less discussed. In particular, the European Union has set in place crisis management policies in a large number of domains that seeks to prepare for crisis, and steer crisis management towards the European level, increasing integration and coordination between member states, providing ex ante mechanisms rather than ad hoc solutions thrown at the table of late night EU summits. This ‘European government of crisis’ provides an interesting case to discuss European integration and Eurozone crisis, and contributes to on-going discussion about crises and the governability of the EU. How does the EU manage crises that exposes interdependencies and require cooperation between and across levels of decision-making (i.e. between member states and with EU institutions)? The paper shows how new policies set up to address crises in various domains create an ‘ungovernable’ system, that, on the one hand deepens the transfer of core state powers by giving the EU more power to manage with crises, while on the other, the very solutions to crises of interdependence create additional challenges, whether in terms of implementation, legitimacy, or accountability. The paper relies on a large empirical qualitative inquiry analysing 4 cases of multi-level crisis management regimes (banking, electricity, youth unemployment, and invasive alien species). 142 interviews were carried, examining negotiation and implementation of policies in various member states, and at EU level.