The EU is often portrayed as “failing forward” during crises, with imperfect solutions driving the European integration process forward over time. Comparing the EU’s response to the Eurozone crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic, Konstantinos Myrodias finds the reality of EU crisis management is often significantly more complex.
The EU has faced an extraordinary sequence of crises in recent years, exposing both the strengths and limits of its crisis management. But do such crises help or hinder the European integration process?
A popular approach to this question is the so called “failing forward” theory. This views crises as part of a cyclical process in which EU crisis responses tend to produce lowest-common-denominator policies. This creates the foundations for future crises, leading to further (incomplete) reforms and thus driving European integration forward over time.
In a new study, I draw on interviews with EU officials to test whether this approach captures the EU’s response to the Eurozone crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. I develop a systematic framework for evaluating the EU’s crisis management performance according to three criteria: how quickly the EU recognises and responds to crises; its ability to mobilise resources rapidly and at a sufficient scale; and whether its response produces long-term institutional change that better prepares the EU for future crises.
The Eurozone crisis
The EU’s response to the Eurozone crisis was slow and reactive. Although warning signs had become increasingly evident, including growing fiscal imbalances and repeated breaches of the Stability and Growth Pact’s rules, EU leaders initially treated the emerging crisis as a problem affecting individual member states, especially Greece, rather than as a systemic threat to the Eurozone. This delayed collective action and allowed financial instability to spread.
When the EU did mobilise resources, its response was slow and limited. Early measures, including the European Economic Recovery Plan and the later creation of bailout mechanisms such as the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) and the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), provided financial support but were often introduced only after market pressures had intensified and the crisis had escalated.
The creation of the EFSF and ESM helped stabilise the Eurozone, but these instruments were shaped by creditor-state preferences, strict conditionality and concerns about moral hazard, rather than by a lowest-common-denominator approach designed to address the crisis.
Moreover, the EFSF and ESM remained largely intergovernmental mechanisms outside the EU’s legal framework, without establishing new long-term EU-level crisis management capacity. As a result, while the crisis response helped preserve the euro, it did not fundamentally strengthen the EU’s supranational capacity to manage future crises.
The COVID-19 pandemic
As in the Eurozone crisis, the EU’s immediate response to the COVID-19 pandemic was slow. The EU initially treated the virus as a distant public health issue rather than an imminent crisis in Europe. This delayed coordination and exposed the limits of the EU’s crisis detection and preparedness mechanisms.
However, once the economic scale of the pandemic became clear, the EU mobilised resources more effectively than it had during the Eurozone crisis. The EU suspended the Stability and Growth Pact’s rules and created new initiatives in the shape of the Support to mitigate Unemployment Risks in an Emergency (SURE) instrument and NextGenerationEU.
This approach marked a significant shift in the EU’s crisis response. In contrast to the limited fiscal approach adopted during the Eurozone crisis, the EU supported recovery through larger-scale common borrowing on behalf of member states to address the economic downturn caused by the pandemic.
However, the EU’s response to the pandemic did not create permanent EU crisis-management capacity. Although NextGenerationEU was innovative, it was designed as a temporary and exceptional instrument rather than as a long-term fiscal mechanism. Overall, the EU’s response to COVID-19 demonstrated a more effective approach in mobilising resources, but it did not transform the Union’s long-term capacity to manage future crises.
Rethinking “failing forward” in EU crisis management
Overall, the comparison between the Eurozone crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic shows that, in both crises, the EU was slow to recognise the scale of the threat and to coordinate a quick collective response. However, its ability to mobilise resources improved significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic, with NextGenerationEU marking a more ambitious response than that adopted during the Eurozone crisis.
Nevertheless, more effective resource mobilisation did not necessarily translate into durable EU crisis-management capacity. Although the EFSF, ESM and NextGenerationEU helped stabilise the Union and preserve unity, they remained largely intergovernmental or temporary instruments.
This highlights that EU crisis responses are not simply the result of lowest-common-denominator bargaining that gradually enhances European integration. They are largely shaped by political interests, power asymmetries and the preferences of influential member states. These crises may also generate new policy instruments without necessarily producing lasting supranational capacity in crisis management.
About the author
Dr Konstantinos Myrodias is a Lecturer in International Political Economy at King’s College London and a Research Associate at the Hellenic Observatory at the London School of Economics.