Reconceptualising the EU-member states relationship in the age of permanent emergency

Abstract

Since 2008, the European Union (EU) has been engulfed in several crises. While distinct, these crises are feeding into each other and are testing the capacity and resilience of EU and member states, bringing forward common policy questions and new forms of cooperation. The permanent character of this state of crisis has made analysts talk about our times as the age of permacrisis. As a result, a trend towards a new mode of ‘coordinative Europeanization’ in EU decision-making has been observed since the Covid-19 crisis. In this paper we first define the new mode of coordinative Europeanization and outline its key features. We argue that the recent crises have altered the EU member states’ relationship in pursuit of fast policy responses. We analyse the reasons behind this changing relationship as well as the possible avenues it may take. We then discuss the challenges caused by coordinative Europeanization and how it relates to pre-existing de-Europeanization tendencies. We close the paper with an analysis of the significance of our findings and we propose new avenues for research.