Unpacking the Galaxy: the evolution of hidden capacity building in the EU budget

After several rounds of conflict-ridden reforms, the EU budget—especially the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF)—appears to have reached its capacity limits in addressing the internal and external challenges facing the Union. The main constraints stem from tight procedural control and the net payment logic, which pits national governments against each other. That said, over the past decade, the EU budget has also undergone a hidden capacity expansion through a series of irregular and exceptional instruments, exemplified by various borrowing and lending tools such as NGEU. These irregular instruments, however, have made the EU budgetary system increasingly complex and opaque, turning it into what be described as a ‘galaxy’. To unpack this budgetary galaxy, the article constructs a new dataset that maps not only the regular EU budget but also its irregular and off-budget components. Based on the new dataset, this article traces the evolution of the EU’s budget galaxy and explores the competence-control dynamics within it.