Resilience, Recovery … and Representation? Debating the COVID-19 Pandemic in the European Parliament

At first glance, the European Union (EU) has reacted quite differently to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic than to the Eurozone crisis. While we are beginning to understand the effects of the pandemic on EU economic governance, we know surprisingly little about its implications for representation dynamics in the European Parliament. Therefore, our contribution asks which patterns of representation emerged in the European Parliament as a response to the COVID-19 recovery efforts? We conduct a representative claims analysis on debates focusing on the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RFF) in order to determine to what extent the discourses and styles of representation were shaped by ideological (left-right; GAL/TAN) or geographical cleavages (North-South; East-West). In doing so, this paper aims to understand better which discourse coalitions were dominant, who formed them and why they were more successful than potential (policy) alternatives.