Join Matteo Frisoni, PhD candidate in the Department of Political Economy at King’s College London and visiting researcher at the European University Institute, for a presentation organised by the Political Economy Working Group.
This seminar will examine how the European Union’s post-COVID investment strategy addressed the challenges of climate change, energy security, and economic recovery. The EU’s response to the pandemic and subsequent energy crisis has been characterised by what policymakers described as an urgency mindset , used to justify a series of legislative initiatives expanding the scope of European industrial and investment policy.
The presentation will explore whether these crises prompted a shift in the EU’s approach to financing decarbonisation. In particular, it will consider whether the EU has moved beyond its traditional strategy of derisking private investment towards more interventionist forms of public financial coordination centred on the European Investment Bank (EIB). Drawing on insights from the literature on developmental states and economic planning, the analysis combines EIB investment data, interviews, and secondary sources to trace the evolution of EU climate finance after the pandemic.
The findings suggest that, despite calls for innovative financing instruments, EIB investment remains largely tied to conventional lending, with limited climate-specific components. In this presentation, we will argue that the Commission’s invocation of an urgency mindset functions as a political strategy that expands legal investment frameworks while consolidating market-based instruments, ultimately reinforcing market logics in areas previously less exposed to financialisation.
Matteo Frisoni is a visiting PhD researcher at the European University Institute (Department of Political and Social Sciences) and a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Economy at King’s College London. His research focuses on the political economy of climate finance, innovation policy, and European economic governance. He holds an MA in Political Science from Sciences Po Paris and a BA in International Relations from the University of Bologna.
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