Sense-making (what is going on) and meaning-making (what are the causes and effects; what are the solutions) are commonly referred in crisis literature as two fundamental tasks of crisis management (Boin et al., 2016). Having a clear emphasis on the political and social aspects of crisis management, these tasks are crucial for guaranteeing that public understands and supports crisis responses (Backman and Rhinard, 2017). Also, particularly meaning-making is said to be associated to change that stems from crisis, thus being relevant to explain the post-crisis course of a policy or a sector. The underlying assumption is that our understanding of crisis (particularly as regards its causes and effects) structures our understanding of future possibilities and needs (Boin & ‘t Hart, 2022). Building on the literature on crisis communication, and particularly on the “crisis – exploitation – reform script” proposed by Arjen Boin and Paul ‘t Hart (2022), combined with literature on policy narratives (e.g., Mintrom et al., 2021) our paper looks at the role of the European Commission and the European Central Bank in sense-making and meaning-making during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our goal is to answer two interrelated research questions: How have the European Commission and the ECB framed the pandemic crisis? Have the Commission and the ECB’s narratives prompted policy change?

After engaging with unconventional monetary policies for a prolonged period, the war in Ukraine and the concomitant meteoric rise of inflation forced the European Central Bank (ECB) to return to its traditional role of fighting inflation. In 2022 the European monetary authority appeared to reembrace the monetarist and ordoliberal ideas that had established it as the world’s most independent central bank. This paper examines the current status of the legitimization framework of the ECB asking whether the recent prioritization of taming inflation signifies the bank’s return to its original economic policy beliefs. It is argued that the ECB’s departure from its monetarist and ordoliberal roots is lasting leading the ECB’s policymakers to pursue a complex mandate that goes beyond the attainment of price stability. The paper explores the compatibility of the evolution of the economic thinking regarding the role of the ECB with the organizational principle of Central Bank Independence.