This article shows that the quasi-fiscal nature of the ECB's unconventional monetary policy measures and its troika membership created three mutually reinforcing threats to its political independence. First, it led to a rising level of public distrust in the ECB. Second, it triggered an elite dissensus on whether political independence of central banks was still the appropriate solution to the time inconsistency problem. Third, it created institutional overburdening with negative repercussions for the central bank's output legitimacy. Faced with this diverse set of challenges in creditor and debtor countries, the ECB exploited EMU's democratic deficit by relying on visits to national parliaments to preserve its independence.

This article provides an assessment of the EU institutions' response to the coronavirus pandemic. By building on a synthesis of the new intergovernmentalism and the emergency politics approach it contends that the effectiveness and legitimacy of de novo bodies like the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) and the European Investment Bank (EIB) have fallen prey to its intergovernmental decision-making structure, whereas the ECB has proven to be more resilient. The European Commission as the traditional engine of European integration was able to fill the gap with its large-scale recovery instrument termed 'Next Generation EU' and via the creation of a temporary loan-based instrument to support national short-term work schemes (SURE). The historic July 2020 European Council produced policy outputs such as the 'emergency brake' and the diluted 'rule of law mechanism' that have the potential to deepen the rift between polarized member states.

About the Centre for European Research in Maastricht (CERiM) CERiM is a Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence and an interdisciplinary research venue creating synergies and stimulating joint projects and events in the fields of European law, governance, and their respective history. It brings together researchers from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASoS), the Faculty of Law (FL), and the University College Maastricht of Maastricht University (UCM). CERiM links the FASoS research programme Politics and Culture in Europe with the Maastricht Centre for European Law (FL), and the Montesquieu Institute Maastricht (FL with participation of FASoS). At the same time it bundles individual efforts to increase international outreach and to give a substantial input to the Maastricht University's strategic research theme Europe and a Globalising World. CERiM is one of several centres at Maastricht that bring together researchers from the Faculty of Law, FASoS, and UCM. Other such centres are MACIMIDE, a centre that focuses on migration, mobility, citizenship, development and family life, and ITEM, a centre that seeks to facilitate Euregional cross-border mobility and cooperation. CERiM collaborates closely with both centres in the form of common events and funding applications.

This article shows that the troika institutions – the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund – formed a technocratic consensus about the desirability of establishing national fiscal councils in the European Union (EU). Considerable disagreement existed, however, with regard to their design features. Each institution promoted a distinct mode of indirect governance by ranking national fiscal councils depending on their adopted governance model (agent, trustee or orchestrator). This persuasion, through entrepreneurial benchmarking, constitutes an important mechanism by which member states were nudged to adopt a distinct fiscal council model. Preference heterogeneity among the troika members ultimately prevented the spread of a one‐size‐fits‐all fiscal council in the EU.

We argue that the evolving preferences and power resources of large cross-border banks help explain the crucial political moves to European banking union. As they became larger and more European, the relative dependence of these banks on national regulators declined even as the dependence of states on these banks increasedresulting in a net rise in the structural power of large banks. These banks benefited from the supranationalization of supervision through reduced compliance costs and the effective opening of European markets. The political divergence in the interests of large international banks and small national ones eventually caused the German and the French governments' change of position in intergovernmental bargaining. Once in place, banking union accelerated balance sheet consolidation to the benefit of large banks that took over their weaker competitors.