Breaking the Budgetary Taboo: German Preference Formation in the EU's Response to the Covid-19 Crisis

Abstract

In the face of the coronavirus pandemic, the German government embraced a major shift towards a grants-based EU recovery fund relying on common European debt. How can we explain this impetus, especially in view of the reticent German fiscal stance in previous years and in the early stages of the pandemic? To elucidate this question, this paper provides a qualitative inquiry into German preference formation during the spring of 2020. Theoretically, it reconciles liberal intergovernmentalist and discursive accounts of preference formation in the context of EU politics stressing the intertwined nature and simultaneousness of preference formation in the national and European arenas. We hypothesise that, along with material self-interests, the construction and framing of the pandemic as a certain type of crisis was key. Examining the stances taken by the federal government, commercial groups and key EU actors such as France and the European Commission, our findings point to a rapid preference realignment in German political and economic circles. Overall, the analysis suggests that especially in times of crisis, assumed national preferences are subject to reconfiguration thus allowing for contingent political responses.

Acknowledgements

Previous versions of this paper were presented at seminars and workshops at the Université catholique de Louvain, the European University Institute, the Swiss Political Science Annual Conference, and the Universität Konstanz. We are very thankful for the valuable feedback and further suggestions we received from numerous colleagues, especially to Daniele Caramani, Claire Dupuy, Clément Fontan, Philipp Genschel, Adrienne Héritier, Antoine Lapeyre de Cabanes, Dirk Leuffen, Frank Schimmelfennig, Virginie Van Ingelgom, and Thomas Winzen. We are also indebted to the two anonymous reviewers who led to us to considerably sharpen the first draft of the paper.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The number of cumulative deaths per million inhabitants is significantly higher in EU ‘debtor’ countries (e.g., Hungary: 3125, Bulgaria: 2872, Italy: 2155, Poland: 1996, Spain: 1832, Portugal: 1758) than in better-off ‘creditor’ countries (e.g., Austria: 1200, Germany: 1106, the Netherlands: 1075, Denmark: 450, Finland: 189). Figures as of 15 September 2021 from database Our World in Data, https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus/

2 For instance, Germany accounted for half of the emergency state aid approved by the European Commission in the first months of the pandemic (Euractiv, May 4, 2020).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Amandine Crespy

Amandine Crespy is Associate Professor of Political Science & European Studies at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) where she is affiliated with the Cevipol and the Institut d’Etudes Européennes (IEE). She is also Visiting Professor at the College of Europe (Bruges). Her research deals with socio-economic governance and policies in the European Union with a focus on the role of ideas, discourse and conflict. She is the co-editor of ‘Governance and Politics in the Post-Crisis European Union’ (2020, Cambridge University Press) and the author of ‘Welfare Markets in Europe’ (Palgrave, 2016) and ‘The European Social Question: Tackling Key Controversies’ (Agenda, 2022).

Lucas Schramm

Lucas Schramm is a Ph.D. Researcher at the Department of Social and Political Sciences at the European University Institute in Florence. He holds a master’s degree in European Political and Administrative Studies from the College of Europe in Bruges. In his doctoral dissertation, he analyses past and more recent political crises in the process of European integration, seeking to explain the variation in crisis outcomes. His recent publications include ‘An Old Couple in a New Setting: Franco-German Leadership in the Post-Brexit EU’ (with Ulrich Krotz, Politics and Governance, vol. 9 no. 1, pp. 48-58) and ‘Exit from Joint-decision Problems? Integration and Disintegration in the EU’s Recent Poly-crisis’ (European Review of International Studies, 2020, vol. 7 no. 1, pp. 2-27).