Between Responsibility and Solidarity: COVID-19 and the Future of the European Economic Order

Abstract

Is the shock of COVID-19 pushing the EU macroeconomic constitution to a new equilibrium between fiscal responsibility and fiscal solidarity? Only a few years after the Eurozone crisis required the rearrangement of the EU economic order, COVID-19 brings the EU to another critical juncture. Already from the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis, most actors recognized that this was no story for national economies alone. The EU had to step in – and so it did, using an impressively broad pallet of instruments. Unlike in the Eurozone crisis, however, when political and legal debates were basically structured around the idea of ‘(national) responsibility’, the structuring role is now claimed by the principle of ‘solidarity’. This Editorial Comment presents some evidence of this shift, discusses its justification, and touches upon the related promises and risks.

Keywords: NextGenerationEU, EU economic governance, solidarity, responsibility, conditionality, COVID-19