Conference Agenda

Since 2020 the European Union (EU) has experienced successive and (a)symmetrical exogenous shocks. The covid-19 pandemic (2020), the war triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (February 2022), and the energy crisis that followed (2022) have all caused significant implications for the EU’s economic governance architecture and its financial framework.

The proposed paper focuses on the impact of polycrises on the EU’s financial perspectives as (initially) laid down in the 2021-2027 Multi-annual Financial Framework (MFF). It is examined whether and to what extend the health crisis, the war crisis in Ukraine, and the energy crisis have served as turning points for the financial perspectives of the EU altogether, creating discontinuities capable to alter path dependent trajectories that characterize the EU’s multiannual budget. The paper explores the implications of the ‘Next Generation EU’ (NGEU) –temporary– initiative focusing on the Resilience and Recovery Fund (RRF), along with new financial instruments (‘SURE’, ‘REPowerEU’, Ukraine facility and the off-budget European Peace Facility), and searches for the consequences of the unprecedented expansion of the EU’s borrowing capacity. Furthermore, the paper analyses the broader implications for the European integration project per se, by critically assessing opportunities and challenges arisen (i.e. new sources of revenues).

Theoretically, the paper draws from historical institutionalism literature. Methodologically, EU secondary law and EU policy analyses and reports are utilized. It is argued that the above three successive crises can be conceptualized as critical junctures signifying the departure from the previous path dependent ‘normality’ of the EU’s MFF into a more challenging route as far as the EU’s financial perspectives is concerned.

In the last 15 years, the EU's core budget has undergone many temporary and ambitious changes through its linkage to numerous funds outside the budget, with regard to macroeconomic assistance (EFSM), Development (EFSD+), Investment and Innovation (InvestEU and EFSI), or the EU's Recovery Instrument (NGEU and the RRF). However, the core budget remains small at just over 1 percent of gross national income and unable to meet unforeseen challenge if there lacks a majority to construct temporary instruments like those mentioned above. In 2024, the expansion of the European Defence Fund and the Ukraine Reserve within the core budget rather than through temporary instruments, suggests an upwards turn in the size of the budget may be possible. Innovation would be required in the budget's financing through new sources of revenue. This paper analyses the financial and policy challenges and the type of package deal that might appeal to Member States that otherwise fear they have something to lose under a new agreement.

Like many European states, Sweden has built its welfare system upon economic growth, with orthodox policy assumptions requiring ongoing economic growth to support continued welfare provision in society. However, such assumptions have come under attack in recent years: ecological economists question the possibility and desirability of continued economic growth on a finite planet, and neoliberalism has undermined commitment to the provision of high levels of public welfare by public actors. Economic growth is now a shared policy area between all four political levels within Swedish politics (municipal, regional, national, and the EU). How ‘successful’ a region is in producing economic growth is issue is addressed at best indirectly: each region must develop a Regional Development Plan which privileges economic growth. Moreover, the rules according to which this must take place are primarily set at EU and national levels, and each plan is focused on a given region, with no mechanism to manage competition between them as they all seek to maximise their economic development. This paper asks whether and how it is possible for regions to gain from such a structural shift, and if not, what are the implications for the provision of public welfare? In a neoliberal economy, can all regions be ‘winners’? Or will one, or some, of them find that their ‘victory’ in economic development requires the failure of other regions in the country?

After a long institutional dialogue, the European Commission presented its legislative proposals for the reform of the framework of European Economic Governance in April 2023 with the aim to promote the simplification of the relevant processes and increase national ownership. While the European fiscal framework underwent a major reform between 2010 and 2013, its implementation in the following years exposed the increased complexity of the new policy regime leading some policymakers to describe it as a ‘bureaucratic monster’. The temporary suspension of the framework during the pandemic enabled the Commission to explore different policy options, while the launch of the Recovery and Resilience Facility provided new impetus to the reform efforts, which culminated in the adoption of three legislative texts in April 2024.

The paper traces the economic policy beliefs underpinning the reformed fiscal framework identifying path dependence as the driver of the policy process. The paper exposes the links between policy complexity and reduced national ownership with particular economic rationales, which have become dominant within the decision-making structures of the Eurozone after 2010. It is argued that only through a radical reform of the fiscal coordination process can the fiscal regime become less bureaucratic and more decentralised.

The trans-European transport network (TEN-T) policy seeks to build an effective and multimodal network of railways, roads, inland waterways and short sea shipping routes linked to urban nodes, maritime and inland ports, airports and terminals across the EU territory. The policy goes back to the late 1990s but is currently based on the 2013 Union guidelines that established the technical requirements for the infrastructure and defined the network layout. While the early TEN-T policy mainly supported the implementation of separate transport 'priority axes' in the EU Member States, the 2013 review introduced a systematic EU-wide network approach with a common set of rules for the network's construction and financing. Over time the EU has complemented national funding of TEN-T projects, supporting TEN-T implementation through the European structural and investment funds (EFSI), a dedicated funding programme – the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) 3 – instruments such as InvestEU and interventions from the European Investment Bank (EIB). In 2021, several Member States also decided to use part of their EU Recovery and Resilience (RRF) funding to advance some TEN-T rail projects. This article examines the emergence and operation of the various financial tools used to finance TENs – both budgetary and non-budgetary – and looks at recent Commission evaluations and audits by the European Court of Auditors to ascertain the mechanisms in place to ensure accountability and to degree to which the financing of TENs is ultimately accountable to the EU taxpayer.