Technocracy, nation state control and the market in the European Union: Patterns of pooling and delegation of competences after the crisis

Institutional changes at EU level in response to the Euro crisis have revitalized the controversy about the relation between intergovernmental control and supranational autonomy in the EU. Either observers see national control over the integration process restored or they postulate a substantial upgrading of supranational autonomy. How can these seemingly fundamentally contradicting findings be explained? The article shows that diverging conclusions about the nature of post-crisis integration depend on the empirical focus the analysts take. However, these contradicting perspectives can be reconciled. By analyzing and systematically comparing the allocation of control over key institutions of the reformed European economic governance architecture, this article argues that both camps are right but also miss a general pattern of integration after the crisis. Member states pooled or delegated the control over a new policy tool according to its relation towards the market. They retained control over all new instruments that could be used for market-correcting purposes. However, only those competences are delegated to supranational institutions that can be used for market-making purposes exclusively. Thus, the reform of the European economic governance regime has simplified the enforcement of liberalization policies while market-correcting measures still require broad political approval by national governments. Consequently, the market-liberal bias of European integration is no longer rooted in the dynamic of legal (negative) integration alone. The reforms have extended the asymmetry between liberalization and social regulation to the political decision-making mode (positive integration). Post-crisis integration structurally reinforces and deepens the pre-crisis asymmetry between market-making and market-correcting of European integration.