When and how to bring in ‘the cavalry’. The interplay between European Council, Council and Commission in managing the Corona crisis

This paper provides a process tracing analysis of the interplay between the European Council, the Council (of Ministers) and the European Commission in developing a coordinated EU response to the Corona crisis. Existential EU crises are undoubtedly ‘Chefsache’, meaning that the challenges are so great and the dossiers so politically sensitive that the Heads (of State or Government) have to engage with them personally. However, as we know from previous crises, the European Council is not the place where major crisis solutions are actually developed and agreed. This explains why practically every European Summit ends with disappointing ‘too little, too late’ analyses on how the Heads again ‘fudged’ a deal. This paper therefore looks beyond the European Council to where the real action has been taking place in the machine room. The paper provides a ‘blow by blow’ reconstruction of European Council, Commission, and Council’ responses, based on interviews and data collected while the crisis was unfolding (February to July 2020). While collecting data in real-time raises many challenges, it avoids hindsight biases where actors generally appear more rational when evaluating the performance and assessing the effectiveness of particular crisis measures. The argument in the paper is that involvement of the Heads in crisis management can propel, paralyze or derail a process, depending on when and how they are brought into play by the Council (specifically, the rotating Presidency and Council Secretariat) and Commission. These EU institutions play a crucial role by anticipating, setting the scene for, and providing the follow up to European Council involvement in effective EU crisis management.