From Pandemic to War: Examining the European Commission’s Approach to Successive Crises

The European Commission's responses to both the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine illustrate a governance pattern increasingly influenced by inter-crisis learning, institutionalized emergency tools, and expanding supranational authority. Building on scholarship that conceptualizes the EU as moving toward "permanent crisis governance" (Rhinard 2019; 2025), this paper argues that the Commission's approach to the Ukraine crisis cannot be comprehended without examining the institutional, procedural, and cognitive legacies produced during the pandemic. Drawing on Angelou's framework of inter-crisis learning, the paper demonstrates that the Commission's experience with instruments during COVID-19, particularly the design and negotiation of the RRF, generated a legacy that later informed its approach to defense industrial challenges after February 2022. These COVID-era templates include centralized procurement, industrial capacity mapping, cross-border supply chain coordination, and the use of exceptional funding instruments, all of which reappear in defense initiatives such as ASAP, EDIRPA, and the emerging EDIP framework. The argument is further grounded in Moloney & Rhinard's (2025) concept of crisis-induced institutionalization, which illustrates how emergency responses create durable administrative capabilities and expectations. In both the health and defense domains, the Commission strategically redeployed crisis governance repertoires—rapid procurement actions, anticipatory monitoring, and exceptional coordination roles—to justify deeper intervention into areas previously dominated by member states. Additionally, analysis of joint public procurement strengthens this institutional continuity argument by showing that the mechanism first tested during COVID (e.g., joint vaccine procurement) evolved into a general industrial policy instrument. In the post-Ukraine context, joint procurement was reinterpreted not only as a crisis tool but as a structural method for shaping Europe's defense industrial base, correcting market fragmentation, and steering production through coordinated demand aggregation. This underscores how successive crises expand the Commission's industrial-policy repertoire and legitimize increasingly interventionist governance. Finally, the paper highlights how COVID-era financial instruments—especially loan-based emergency mechanisms such as SURE (Support to mitigate Unemployment Risks in an Emergency)—influenced the Commission's defense financing proposals, including the SAFE ( Security Action for Europe) Regulation and the use of the Stability and Growth Pact's escape clauses (Pench 2025). Together, these developments illustrate a broader supranational consolidation of emergency economic governance. Empirically, the paper draws on document analysis and elite interviews with Commission, EEAS, and Permanent Representation officials. Theoretically, it demonstrates how successive crises create a path dependency and lessons learned that influence the decisions for the next crises, contributing to the growing literature concerning the role of the European Commission.