Reconfirming the new intergovernmentalism – EU economic governance and institutional change in the wake of the crisis

The system of economic governance within Economic and Monetary (EMU) as established by the Maastricht Treaty followed a decisively intergovernmental logic. Member states dominated all key decision-making processes as they remained ultimately responsible for policy implementation and kept control over key macroeconomic policy instruments – most notably their budgetary autonomy. Yet, the practice of intergovernmental policy coordination pursued since the end of the 1990s led to the growing informal and formal institutionalisation of coordination routines, with the Eurogroup being the most prominent example. The commitment to ongoing policy dialogue and consensus seeking became the key characteristic of this setting, thus constituting a new deliberative intergovernmentalism. Though the consequences of the economic crisis constitute the so far most serious test not only to EMU but to the wider project of European integration, there is no sign of an abandoning of the underlying institutional logic behind EMU economic governance. Apart from the supranationalisation of banking supervision and regulation, reforms have stopped short of questioning the central role of policy coordination among member states as the key governance framework. Also new instruments such as Fiscal Compact as well as the stabilisation mechanisms EFSF and ESM followed this logic. Yet, it is the way intergovernmental policy coordination itself is functioning within EMU which is changing. – The European Council developed into the centre of political gravity and also meets as a euro-area-only configuration. The Eurogroup became increasingly formalised while being supported by a growing intergovernmental bureaucratic structure. As the coordination set-up becomes more sophisticated and national executive even more influential than before new forms of parliamentary control have been demanded involving new roles for both national parliaments and the European Parliament. – The paper traces these institutional changes and interprets them as a process of institutional engineering following the logic of a new deliberative intergovernmentalism which has emerged next to the classic community method as key framework for EU decision-making in the post-Maastricht era.