The Experts Behind the Conditions. A Mapping of European Technical Assistance.

Since the 1980s, the European Union has increasingly relied on technical assistance to support member states, candidate countries, and developing states in designing and implementing policy reforms. This “assistance” encompasses a broad set of activities deemed capable of sustaining state reform processes—from the initial design of public policy projects to their operationalisation. In the context of the crises of the 2010s, this tool not only expanded but also became closely intertwined with another now-central mechanism in EU governance: conditionality. The normalisation of linking access to EU funding to the implementation of reforms—through instruments varying in their coercive potential—has permeated a wide range of European tools, from the European Semester to the post-Covid-19 Recovery and Resilience Plans. As a result, the European Commission has taken on an increasingly interventionist role in member states’ public policies, including in areas that lie beyond its traditional competences. After examining the processes through which these instruments have become routinised, this paper proposes to explore how they have contributed to the (re)constitution of a distinct world of experts. I focus on the actors who intervene as service providers—international organisations, consulting firms, national development agencies, and EU institutions—drawing on a newly assembled database of technical assistance contracts, combining data from the EU Financial Transparency system and grey literature. The paper will first offer a mapping of this reformist space, highlighting the geographical divisions it reinforces: on the one hand, a reforming North-West that produces public and private expert-providers; on the other, a reformed South-East that constitutes the main target of these interventions. In a second step, I will discuss what this reforming world reveals about a broader process of Europeanising state reforms within the EU, and about the symbolic hierarchies embedded in this process.