New forms of differentiated integration in response to crisis

The EU has taken big steps towards more integration in response to crisis in recent years, escalating with the war on Ukraine. One development is the emergence of many new hybrid preparedness and crisis-management mechanisms, where the Member States delegate limited authority to the Commission to ensure coordination and more effective implementation. Such mechanisms have for example been activated or established in civil emergency preparedness, cyber security, space security, energy security and in areas linked to economic security such as FDI screening and anti-coercion. While formally intergovernmental, in these fields, the Commission has gained much influence both as an agenda-setter, de facto decision-taker and implementing force. This paper draws on but further develops Schimmelfennig’s categorisation of differentiated integration to systematically explore the emergence of these new forms of EU integration, teasing out the institutional structures that are now emerging and how they testify to new forms of internal differentiated integration in the EU.