CRISES AND INSTITUTIONAL TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE EU

Abstract

The multifaceted crisis brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic has led to the adoption of the
Next Generation EU temporary recovery instrument, which encompassed several major steps
towards strengthening of the EU institutional framework, including issuance of bonds by the
Commission worth up to 850 billion Euros and conditionality for the disbursement of recovery
funds based on the respect of the rule of law. Similarly, the global financial and economic crisis
provoked the reform of the Stability and Growth Pact, while the European sovereign debt crisis
that ensued prompted the EU Member States to undertake major reforms in the form of the
banking, fiscal and capital markets unions. Considering these causal relations, a claim may be
made that crises form an indispensable basis of every transformational step along the pathway
of EU institutional development. If such claim were true, a question arises whether it means
that the path “towards an ever-closer Union” is taken out of necessity or is it simply a
consequence of the democratic deficit of the EU, so that only in times of crises political
decision-making within Member States becomes susceptible to further EU integration. The
analysis shows that it is the intertwining of pragmatic interests on one hand and values and
identity aspects on the other that form the basis of EU integration. Such understanding leads to
the conclusion that the fact that the EU in recent decades moved forward only in crises is indeed
caused by the democratic deficit in the EU.