ALTERNATIVE FUTURES OF EU INTEGRATION AFTER THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC - Andrea Renda, Aaron Rosa, Moritz Laurer

Contrary to these views, the institutionalist approach emphasises the importance of institutions in the process of integration, a view that 4 The ‘empty chair’ crisis was triggered by the proposal for the financing of the common agricultural policy (CAP), drawn up in 1965 by the President of the Commission, Walter Hallstein. [...] Importantly, the financial crisis and the ensuing Eurozone crisis were seen as increasingly empowering traditional supranational actors in the European Commission and the European Court of Justice (ECJ), and as key events leading to the creation of de novo EU bodies and instruments outside the main EU institutions: the European Central Bank (ECB), the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), the Europe. [...] The same can be said for the Commission’s stronger powers of oversight and enforcement in the context of the European Semester, as well as in the imposition of conditionalities in the disbursement of cohesion funds. [...] At the same time, as already explained, the need to reach an agreement on Next Generation EU has weakened some of the ambitions of the EU, especially in the fields of research, humanitarian aid and healthcare, leading to a possible strengthening of the national dimension in the overall governance of the Union. [...] (2020) identify pre-existing and post-pandemic geopolitical trends including the possible rise of China; the uncertain future of transatlantic relations (now apparently being revived after Joe Biden’s victory in the US 2020 presidential elections18); the evolving tensions between the EU, Russia and the Western Balkans, as well as in the Southern neighbourhood; and the uncertain prospects of the de.