Conditionality and the EU responses to COVID-19: Multilevel governance and political legitimacy

The link between the EU budget and the rule of law toolbox has been discussed for years. However, the general conditionality regulation (Regulation 2020/2092) to protect the EU budget could only be adopted as part of EU crisis management to deal with the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic. Due to the extraordinary circumstances of the crisis, such as the need for quick decisions and the uncertainty of the outcome, decision-making and the implementation of Regulation 2020/2092 and the Recovery and Resilience Facility (Regulation 2021/241) were interlinked and decided under enormous pressure. However, both regulations will have long-lasting structural impact for the EU multilevel governance system. To date, there have been few comprehensive empirical analyses examining the interrelation between the EU’s economic and fiscal responses to Covid-19 and the new instrument of the EU rule-of-law toolbox. Based on existing works about the EU’s legitimacy, the paper analyses the input, throughput and output dimensions of the process of the decision making of both regulations and their impact on democratic governance through the perspective of multilevel governance.