Monday 9 December 2024 10.00 – 19.00
Tuesday 10 December 2024 09.00 – 18.00
Fondazione Feltrinelli (viale Pasubio, 5, Milano)
Kate Alexander-Shaw (LSE), Marcello Natili (University of Milan), Ioana-Elena Oana (EUI), Waltraud Schelkle (EUI), Zbigniew Truchlewski (University of Amsterdam, EUI)
How has the EU not only survived the damage from a series of serious crises but actually created policy capacities and stabilising institutions? The theoretical starting point of this workshop is that we gain insights into both the EU’s vulnerability to crises and its resilience if we analyse the EU as a compound polity (Ferrera, Kriesi and Schelkle 2024). This is an innovative research programme informed in substance and methods by comparative politics and political economy, rather than the grand integration theories derived from International Relations. The contributions to this workshop, undertaken in the context of the ERC Synergy Project SOLID, have this vantage point. They compare crises, or episodes within a major EU crisis, with a view to how elements of the EU polity evolve across these crises (episodes), the features that contribute to repeated crises and to explaining how the polity was maintained even when profoundly threatened.
EU polity formation is no longer happening by stealth but has become a salient and polarising affair. This is not necessarily bad: it is an opportunity for voters to engage with questions such as what the EU means for them and what kind of EU they would like their country to be a member of. But politicisation of the EU can also lead to paralysis in decision-making and the perception that the EU itself is the cause for repeated crises. The normal contestation of policy measures can then escalate into the contestation of the polity itself.
The resilience of the EU over the long crisis decade since 2008 had to be achieved, it was not a given case of institutional inertia. The contributions demonstrate that the union may remain inherently unstable, at the mercy of third parties to whom the underlying problem has been shifted or unsettled by festering Euroscepticism. Our innovation compared to most EU crisis research is to grasp the outcome in terms of how crises affect territorial and functional boundaries, binding authority and bonds of loyalty, i.e. the reconfiguration of competences and membership entailed, with uncertain consequences for transnational solidarity between member states.
In the long run, the communicative and material supply of crisis responses and how they resonate with the wider public will decide whether EU polity formation has made it more robust when facing adversity. Is policy feedback of crisis measures on public opinion and their political representatives positive and can the cueing by politicians influence the public’s attitudes towards more transnational solidarity in the EU? This is ultimately the crucial question for EU polity formation, whether stealthy or salient, if it wants to escape Monnet’s curse.
Please, find the Agenda attached: SOLID Dec 2024 AGENDA