How will economic governance in the European Union change in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic? The EU has marshalled a robust economic response to the crisis, including powerful fiscal and monetary policy tools, such as the Commission’s Recovery Fund and the ECB’s Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme (PEPP). The pandemic response is already reshaping the EU’s Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), and its structures of economic governance, and are likely to necessitate some adjustments to the EU’s constitutional architecture.
However, the EU’s pandemic response is still subject to political and legal challenges. The Recovery Fund has been jeopardized by some Member States’ objections to the introduction of a rule of law conditionality mechanism into the EU’s spending plans. This mechanism is a powerful tool for the protection of the fundamental values of the EU as well as the integrity of its budget. Meanwhile, the legality of PEPP may be disputed by the German Constitutional Court, as prefigured in the Weiss case, which could lead to conflict with the European Court of Justice regarding the primacy of EU law. This raises the question of what kind of judicial review the ECB should be subject to.
The event will present new, cutting-edge academic research on these important and timely questions, and debate such questions jointly with distinguished scholars, policy-makers and practitioners from across Europe.
The event will feature Philip Lane (Member of the ECB Executive Committee & ECB Chief Economist) as the keynote speaker, followed by a panel, chaired by Dr Chiara Zilioli (Director General of ECB Legal Service), featuring Prof. Stefania Baroncelli (University of Bolzano/Bozen) & Annelieke Mooij (DCU), Prof. Federico Fabbrini (Brexit Institute), Dr. Johannes Lindner (ECB), Prof. Renata Uitz (CEU), Prof. Armin von Bogdandy (Max Planck Institute Heidelberg) and Dr. Oliver Glück (Partner at GSK Stockmann).
More information about the event can be found here.
