New frontiers of European Union funding

Abstract

European Union (EU) funding has been characterized by significant innovations since 2020, and these often controversial innovations give rise to complex legal issues. It is time for legal scholars to join other political and social scientists in trying to make sense of these innovations. This opening chapter provides a baseline and three new frontiers of EU funding for identifying and evaluating these developments. The baseline concerns calibrating the EU budget against national budgets and those of international organizations. The first frontier concerns the drivers and channels of funding innovations, the second is centred around the rule of law, and the third concerns substantive EU law and governance.