Linking crises: Intercrisis learning and the European Commission’s approach to the National Recovery and Resilience Plans

The article examines potential linkages between the management of the Eurozone crisis and the EU’s economic response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It does so by zooming in on the Commission and its approach to conditionality-based financial aid. The analysis employs the concept of intercrisis learning to argue that that the lessons that the Commission drew from the Eurozone crisis informed its conditionality-related proposals for the National Recovery and Resilience Plans (NRRPs) By using qualitative data, including 8 elite interviews, the article suggests that the Commission derived lessons regarding the design, negotiation, implementation and monitoring of conditionality programs. These lessons led to cognitive changes within the organization and to behavioural changes reflected in the conditionality attached to the NRRPs. The analysis also suggests that these lessons informed the Commission’s approach to the process of Europeanisation leading it to a more coordinative pattern in relation to the member-states. The article contributes to the literature examining the EU’s economic response to the pandemic by discussing the Commission’s drivers and preferences during thar period. It ,also, complements the literature on coordinative Europeanisation by offering insights on how the European Commission shapes its proposals on conditionality and, by extension, a central element of its relationship with the member-states.