Change against the odds

• Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies
• Department of Political and Social Sciences

Waltraud Schelkle presents her research, co-authored with Ann-Kathrin Reinl and Joris Frese, as part of the Political Economy Working Group seminar series.

Since 2008, EU governments have repeatedly pooled their resources to combat severe crises. In this event, Waltraud Schelkle, Ann-Kathrin Reinl, and Joris Frese examine whether this process has contributed to the EU’s maturation as a polity through policy feedback—a phenomenon in which past policy decisions generate political demand for either stability or change.

Their research focuses on sovereign bailout funding in the 2010s, which politicised EU fiscal governance to an unprecedented degree. Conventional wisdom suggests that such politicisation creates significant barriers to further fiscal institution-building, as it is often seen as constraining or even paralysing EU decision-making. Yet, the introduction of the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) in 2020-21 amounted to a form of pre-emptive bailout funding.

This event analyses the policy process that led to the RRF, arguing that elites strategically politicised the economic response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This strategic politicisation, in turn, generated momentum for this landmark reform through negative policy feedback.