Regulating crises: new powers for the EU

Over the past decades, the EU has developed not only a capacity to intervene during crises, but also to regulate crises. COVID-19 has exposed the importance of the EU in regulating the single market in times of crises and in coordinating Member states (Beaussier et Cabane 2020). However, the EU’s ability to intervene in crises goes much further. In many domains, the EU has built a capacity to regulate member’s state crisis management capacities and policies – and this is exactly what it is now trying to do in the case of health emergencies in order to ensure that member states’ policies align with one another and can coordinate. The paper will analyse what it means for the EU to regulate crisis management, a core state capacity, how this contributes to building up new ‘core state powers’ (Genschel and Jachtenfuchs) for the EU. It will provide cases from various sectors, based on in-depth empirical research (Lodge and Cabane): financial crisis management, invasive alien species, electricity, youth unemployment, looking at the various strategy to regulate crisis management.