Committing to a Common Response? Supranational Regulation in Energy and Migration Policy after the Invasion of Ukraine

Recent literature has argued that the invasion of Ukraine did not lead to further EU integration. Depending on the policy field, member states were either in conflict or preferred coordination between national governments over centralizing capacities. However, this literature misses the supranational regulatory outcomes which bind member states to common responses. We have seen such outcomes in two crucial policy fields usually fraught with diverging interests and policy blockade – energy and migration policy. In energy policy, member states were asymmetrically exposed to scarcity and price surges, but agreed on new regulations which ensure minimal solidarity and will lastingly reform the electricity market. In migration policy, member states have long been divided over refugee distribution and further supranationalisation. However, rather than opting for intergovernmental coordination, they rapidly activated a long-dormant regulatory instrument that ensured a common approach by considerably limiting member state discretion in responding to the influx of Ukrainian refugees. To explain these puzzling outcomes, we argue that temporary shifts in the interests and relative power of member states opened a window of opportunity in which supranational regulation became a useful commitment device. In energy policy, Germany – temporarily weakened by its dependence on Russian energy – became a demander of solidarity, allowing other member states to bind it to market reforms it had long opposed. In migration policy, member states showed unprecedented agreement to welcome refugees. However, the politically contentious nature of migration policy and asymmetric exposure to refugee inflows rendered informal coordination difficult. The Temporary Protection Directive allowed member states to credibly commit themselves to de-facto solidarity and comparable rights provisions, without needing to activate an explicit relocation mechanism. The findings enhance our understanding of the EU’s crisis responses by illuminating how the temporality of interest- and powershifts can drive supranational regulation.