New governance in the EU after the Euro crisis : retired or re-born?

Abstract

This working paper discusses the future of the EU’s ‘new governance’ paradigm, as a particular category of the EU’s legal acts in light of developments in EU economic governance following the Euro crisis. It advances both an empirical and a normative argument. While EU economic governance ‘after’ the euro crisis would seem to carry ‘hard law’ elements, the paper’s key empirical claim is that ‘post’ euro-crisis economic governance has generalized central elements of the new governance paradigm into an increasingly central domain of EU policy-making. Policy-makers have turned to an enhanced form of new governance as a way of managing complex, multi-level problems which traditional command and control regulation could not solve. Normatively, however, some of the more promising aspects of the new governance legacy – its experimental focus on policy innovation and mutual learning between states – is precisely the aspect of the new governance paradigm post-crisis economic decision-making seems to have left behind. New governance is used in the economic field not to promote learning or experimentation between states but to foster greater harmonization and convergence in fiscal performance. Learning the lessons of new governance’s past may be vital in securing a central (and positive) place for new governance instruments within the EU’s future constitutional landscape.