This Workshop will assess the deep and systemic changes in the functioning of the European Union system as a result of decades of dealing with crises and major policy challenges. Instead of looking at individual decisions and policy measures, it will explore changes in policy-making dynamics across policy areas (e.g. climate, energy, industry, defence, migration, trade, finances) and in the governance structures within and across the institutions. It will include academic and practitioners’ assessments of the deeper and lasting effects on the EU-machinery. It combines these various contributions into an meso-level classification of the types and degrees of changes.
This Workshop takes us beyond the many macro-level assessments and case-study analyses of the EU’s response to specific crises or challenges (Jones et al, 2021; Kassim 2023; Ladi and Polverari, 2024; Nicoli and Zeitlin, 2024; Schimmelfennig, 2024). It provides a much-needed meso-level perspective on these changes across policy areas, institutions and in member states.
Over the last two decades, the EU has been confronted with series of structural challenges, a.o. in climate, energy, defence, migration, finances, industry, trade, cost of living (Anghel and Jones, 2023; Conzelmann & Vanhoonacker, 2025; Ferrara et al, 2024; Herranz-Surrallés et al, 2024). While such challenges often arise from or during a crisis, their impact may last longer and the process of dealing with them may run deeper into the EU machinery (Kreuder-Sonnen and White, 2022; McNamara 2024; Rhinard, 2019; Truchlewski et al, 2023).
While the literature has touched upon specific aspects of this development (Abrahamsen et al. 2025; Brandsma and Blom-Hansen, 2025; Gallinella and Christiansen, 2024; Puetter and Terranova, 2025; Smeets and Beach, 2022), we lack a broader, more comprehensive understanding of how the EU system has been affected or transformed by these challenges. This Workshop will provide empirically-grounded assessments of the lasting changes and effects in the functioning of the EU governance system.
The Workshop invites contributions that use recent or current cases to diagnose changes a.o. within and across policy regimes, administrative practices and institutional balances. Contributions can also provide broader horizontal, comparative analyses of how effects differ across challenges.
1: Depth: How have crises/challenges affected the deep administrative layers of the EU system of governance?
2: Breadth: To what extent are effects confined to or do they spread beyond crisis or directly affected policy areas?
3: Duration: How long do effects persist beyond the immediate crisis and what explains their endurance or reversal?
4: Type: How can we classify these effects at the meso-level, running from shallow to transformational effects?
5: Drivers: What are the causal triggers, mechanisms and dynamics behind these changes or effects in the EU system?
1: Overarching assessments of changes and effects based on past cases.
2: Practitioner’s reconstructions and perspectives on changes within the EU system.
3: Analyses of institutional and bureau-political routines within a strained EU system.
4: Inter-institutional comparisons and intra-institutional (deep) explorations of changes.
5: Current, real-time, analyses of EU-level (and related national-level) organizational practices.
6: Empirical analyses that explore/compare differences and communalities within/across policy areas.
