Thesis defence by Béla Strauss
In the last 15 years, the EU has faced a series of crises that are related to the Eurozone, Brexit, the rule of law, Covid-19, migration, and the war on Ukraine. In that context, the EU has been described as being in a state of ‘polycrisis’ or ‘permacrisis’ and has increasingly integrated a core state task, namely that of crisis management. This development has implications for the EU constitutional framework, in particular in relation to checks on emergency executive power and normalization of the usage of emergency instruments at the EU level, which in principle should only be used exceptionally and temporarily.
Nevertheless, EU emergency law remains relatively understudied, and the notion of emergency underconceptualized. This thesis tries to address these deficiencies by adopting a broader perspective than existing EU emergency literature, which tends to focus exclusively on the crisis that happens to be salient at the time. Instead, this thesis examines the role of the EU as a crisis actor across time and crises. In doing so, this thesis aims to offer an account of how EU emergency executive power evolves over time and through crises.
For that purpose, the thesis gives an account of executive and emergency power generally (chapter 2), as well as how these powers manifest within the EU (chapter 3), highlighting that the EU’s emergency legal framework is a patchwork of rules that has not grown with the EU’s expanded crisis role. The thesis then zooms in on three case studies of recent crises, namely the Eurozone crisis (chapter 4), the Covid-19 pandemic (chapter 5) and the war on Ukraine (chapter 6) and examines the EU’s response to these crises. The thesis concludes by outlining an emerging model of EU emergency response that is rooted in the three crises analyzed. This model is characterized by the application of conditionality as a crisis instrument. Taking inspiration from the crisis practice at the national level, the thesis reflects on how the EU emergency framework might be improved.
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