How have EU ‘fire-fighters’ sought to douse the flames of the eurozone’s fast- and slow-burning crises? The 2013 structural funds reform

Abstract

This article examines the debates surrounding the Regulation 1303/2013 on structural funds, arguing that the rules adopted in the midst of the eurozone crisis to strengthen the governance of the euro area had spill-over effects on cohesion policy. It shows how, in the fast-burning phase of the crisis (2010-2013), some actors pushed forward the idea of suspending structural funds in case of non-compliance with the rules of the Stability and Growth Pact, making funding conditional on Member States' compliance with the rules of the new economic governance, and how, after the entry into force of this Regulation, in the slow-burning phase of the crisis (from 2013 onwards), a greater number of actors has been calling for a more flexible interpretation of the rules. To explain the disruption between t1 and t2, the article examines the change in the power relations between and within institutions and the change in ideas.

Framing brain drain: between solidarity and skills in European labor mobility

“…Storylines are always embedded in broader structures of discourse (Hajer, 1997), and storylines that become institutionalized shift these structures in ways that make them more amenable to the frames communicated by the storyline. Coman (2018), in her analysis of the 2013 structural funds reform, finds that changes in crisis perceptions also interacted with changing power relations between EU institutions and changes in the ideational structure of prevailing discourse (see also: Coman, 2017). Also drawing on the fast-versus slow-burning distinction, she argues that the Parliament was sidelined during the fast-burning years by a strong partnership between the Council and Commission, but as perceptions changed toward slower-burning crises, the Council in turn became sidelined by a growing partnership between the Parliament and the Commission.…”

‘I want my sovereignty back!’ A comparative analysis of the populist discourses of Podemos, the 5 Star Movement, the FN and UKIP during the economic and migration crises

“…To compare the conceptions of sovereignty articulated by these four political parties, we chose to analyse their discourse on economic and migration issues, during two successive periods: 2012-2014, when we see the effects of the fast-burning phase of the Eurocrisis in the member states (Coman 2018) and 2015-2017, when migration issues were most salient, mainly due to the Syrian refugee crisis 2 . In each of these periods, the speeches have been selected based on the presence of at least one of the following key words: 'crisis', 'economy', 'euro', 'austerity', 'migration', 'asylum", 'border', 'Schengen'.…”

Policy transfer within the European Union and beyond: Europeanization in times of stability and crises

“…Since the passage and enforcement of the Lisbon Treaty, the EU has been facing the 'decade of crises', some of them being 'fast-burning', others 'slow burning' (Coman, 2018;Seabrooke and Tsingou, 2018). As illustrated in the sections below, these crises have affected both the EU's internal and external policies.…”

“…The Eurozone crisis has had multi-faceted effects which have, on one hand, accelerated the path of EU integration -in some policy areas more than in others -and changed the balance of power at the EU level, while on the other hand, the crisis has affected member states policies and politics. This flourishing body of research has grown steadily in recent years, pointing out how 'fast-' and 'slow-burning' crises affect both EU integration and Europeanization alike (Coman, 2018;Seabrooke and Tsingou, 2018).…”

“…In the post-crisis context, the impact of hard mechanisms of compliance, such as conditionality, on domestic policies no longer depends on the willingness of domestic actors to adapt. Their impact depends also on the willingness of EU actors to apply sanctions or not (Coman, 2018). For example, while in the first years of the Eurozone crisis EU institutional actors sought to strengthen the rules of the SGP (Schmidt, 2016), these rules have been re-interpreted with greater flexibility once the stability of the Euro was ensured (Coman, 2018).…”