How EU money is spent. Mapping institutional features of spending governance

Scholarly attention on distributive EU policy has focused on the intergovernmental negotiation of the budget or on decentralized implementation in the member states. We are interested in capturing and explaining what takes place between: the governance of spending. Theoretically, we draw on competence control theory. Does an increase in the number of programs comes with more/ different types of controls that are likely to affect the EU’s capacity to solve problems and do good for citizens? To address this question, the paper introduces a dataset of all programs through which the EU spends money in social (14 programs) and industrial policy (24 programs). It develops and operationalizes indicators to assess competences and controls for each program/ year unit from 1987 until today. To capture competences, it considers the number of programs, their revenue origin, resource type and finance, source of authority, as well as (at a later stage) payment allocation and disbursement. On controls, the responsible DG can be empowered or constrained by procedural, substantive and conditionality controls. Regarding the shape of competences, the paper shows that there is an increase in the number of programs and that we observe interesting variance in the quality of these competences. Procedural controls differ substantively between policy areas and over time. Conditionality controls grow over time, attaching strings from other policy areas to EU industrial and social spending. While this might be beneficial in reaching rule of law or macro-economic objectives, it renders the usage of spending programs more complex and potentially less targeted on industrial and social policy achievements.