Transverse or Circumventive Integration? The Case of the Gradual Emergence of Common EU Debt

When first proposing the concept of “transverse integration”, Dyson and Marcussen (2010) anticipated well that “forms and practices of transverse institutional integration may rapidly appear and disappear, be activated and then neglected”, especially when it concerns the institutions of the EMU, a “site for contest”. When looking at the case of common EU debt, its gradual emergence from the Euro crisis to the covid-19 pandemic was made possible by the circumvention of veto players, sometime as strong as Germany. By contrast, the post-covid period shows a new pattern, where no further significant actions have been taken towards the issuance of more EU-debt, despite calls and anticipation that the Russian invasion of Ukraine would prompt the same result as the pandemic. Despite the joint pressure of Moscow and Washington on a cash-strapped EU, veto players such as Hungary or lately Belgium have prevented the innovative use of more EU common debt. Based on the past 15 years of institutional history of common debt, I argue that the patterns of transverse integration identified by Dyson and Marcussen were tied to an era where the circumvention of veto players was made possible by specific conditions that no longer apply to the post-pandemic period.