In response to the Eurozone financial crisis, significant changes have occurred in EU governance. These have included the establishment of new institutions (e.g., the European Stability Mechanism), the creation of new EU competences (e.g., banking supervision), the invention of new procedures (e.g., the European Semester), but also incremental and/or informal changes in governing practices (e.g., the growing policy role of the European Council). Some of these changes have been deliberate innovations designed to improve the longer-term quality of EU policy-making, others have come about as unintended by-products of short-term rescue measures.

This panel, which brings together scholars of various nationalities and generations, seeks to identify the most important of these changes; it will then offer a preliminary assessment, from a political and legal perspective, of how they have reconfigured EU governance. Finally, the panel will critically assess the normative consequences of these changes, not least for the EU's democratic legitimacy.

Aspects of EU governance addressed by the presentations will include the intergovernmental/supranational balance (Sergio Fabbrini), the role of the European Commission (Michelle Cini), the growing importance of discretionary decision making (Jonathan White), the effects of the crisis on EU constitutionalism (Nicole Scicluna), as well as its impact on citizen participation and democracy (Achim Hurrelmann).