The academic literature on crises in Europe and beyond has long emphasised the role of ideas during political economic emergencies and how they shape key policy-decisions, potentially leading to paradigm changes. The so-called polycrisis era has reinforced such a focus as well as the idea that recurring crises have fundamentally influenced the outlook of the EU and predict that this will happen increasingly in the future. For good or bad, Jean Monnet statement about Europe being forged in crises seem to be as relevant as ever.

While there is agreement on the previous points, the ways in which ideas, proposals and ultimately policies are adapted as the result of recurring crises is still under-researched and under-theorised. In particular, memory appears as a blind spot of the literature. The work of Cassis on the memory of past crises shows the relevance of looking at memory as an integral component of policy-making. However, this is focusses on the financial sector and how they adapt their actions as a result of crises. No structured study of memory's influence on policy-making.

The paper provides a structured analysis of how memory of past crises influences policy-making in the following shocks. In particular, studying EU discourses during the Eurozone crisis, Covid-19 pandemic and the Cost of living crisis, it develops a typology that could be employed in future studies of memory and crisis-management.

Scholars argue that in the European Union (EU), the increased frequency, complexity, and number of crises result in the crisification of policymaking, lawmaking, and governance (Moreno-lax 2023; Rhinard 2019). This article posits, from a social constructivist and discursive institutionalist perspective, that crisification begins with the social and discursive framing of issues as crises. Yet, despite its significance, crisification as a discursive trend has not been examined longitudinally, nor has a framework been established to measure crisification at the level of discourse. To address this significant research gap(s), the article develops a novel conceptual framework for analyzing discursive crisification through five dimensions: 1) frequency and 2) breadth of crisis framing, 3) emergence of newly crisified issues, 4) pre-emptive framing, and 5) invocation of polycrisis. This framework is then applied to an empirical case of the Twitter communication of six key EU institutions (European Committee of the Regions, European Commission, European Parliament, European Council/Council of the EU, European Central Bank, and Council President). The study spans an extensive temporal horizon of twelve years (April 2012–June 2024), analyzes a large dataset of 1,925 crisis-related tweets and employs a multi-method approach - Discourse Network Analysis helps map relationships between institutions and their articulated crises, identifying the most crisified issues and key crisifying actors. Content analysis is used to systematically track and quantify the five dimensions of crisification over time. As such, the study provides critical insights into crisification as a trend in EU communication, showing how it drives shifts toward pre-emptive, crisis-oriented policymaking with potential repercussions for EU legitimacy and integration. From a policy perspective, the findings highlight the risks of over-reliance on crisis narratives in policy communication, which can entrench a permanent state of crisis in public perception and influence citizen attitudes, and trust toward the EU.

This paper advances a conceptual framework for strengthening the European Union’s (EU) capacity to withstand sudden shocks—ranging from geopolitical crises to economic downturns—without undermining its legitimacy. Leveraging theoretical insights from complex adaptive systems and multi-level governance studies, the framework introduces the notion of “governance shock absorbers” as innovative mechanisms that diffuse external pressures rather than transmit them directly through EU institutions. These shock absorbers, operating at various junctures between the European Commission, the Council of the EU, the European Parliament, and national authorities, are designed to mitigate escalating conflicts, protect public trust, and avoid institutional overload during crises. Building on lessons from the Eurozone, migration, and COVID-19 crises, the paper conceptualizes how well-calibrated governance shock absorbers can enhance both EU’s legitimacy and operational resilience. By limiting the destabilizing effects of acute pressures, these mechanisms enhance responsiveness, accountability, and solidarity—key dimensions in maintaining the EU’s legitimacy among citizens and stakeholders. Through scenario-based modelling and in-depth stakeholder analysis, the paper systematically examines how different configurations of shock absorbers might be embedded in EU decision-making processes, thereby reinforcing the EU’s resilience in a complex and evolving political environment. This paper thus contributes to EU crisis management debates by illustrating how the EU can not only withstand shocks but also enhance its resilience and democratic legitimacy.

EU-US relations after four years of the Biden administration were a puzzling mixture, especially when considered in contrast to the preceding Trump administration. On the one hand there were intense coordination of economic and diplomatic measures against Russia, continued declarations of partnership and a commitment to multilateralism in issues such as climate diplomacy, and institutional development at the bilateral level with the initiation of the EU-US Trade and Technology Council and related bodies. On the other hand, there was strong evidence on both sides of domestic preoccupations and a new form of mercantilism centred on state aids and industrial policies, combined with US unilateralism and ‘domesticism’ and the EU’s potential diplomatic marginalisation in areas such as the Indo-Pacific or the Middle East. Alongside these apparent contradictions there were asymmetric responses to the assertiveness of China and associated geopolitical and geo-economic tensions. Despite strong elements of continuity in US policies between the first Trump and Biden Administrations, the second Trump Administration promised to up-end many of the core policies of the Biden Administration, and to confront the EU in areas such as trade, tehnology and security – a prospect met with uncertain responses by the EU and its member states. How are we to make sense of the tensions and counter-currents that continue to characterise transatlantic relations? This paper sets recent and current EU-US relations in a broader historical and analytical context, by briefly reviewing a series of crises in transatlantic relations since the late 1950s, drawing attention to the ways in which the Euro-American system is structured and driven by a set of underlying forces, considering developments since 2017 in light of these forces, and exploring the implications of ‘Trump 2.0’ in the EU and the US.