EU Fiscal Capacity Legal Integration After Covid-19 and the War in Ukraine

The explosion of the Covid-19 pandemic in February 2020 led to a paradigm change in the European Union architecture of economic governance. To mitigate the pandemic's damage, the EU established a Recovery Fund called 'Next Generation EU' (NGEU). Funded though resources raised on the financial markets, this special budget is worth 750bn€ at 2018 prices, which corresponds to 806,9bn€ at current prices. Disbursed to member states in the form of both loans and grants and to be repaid on a long-term basis through the introduction of new EU taxes, the NGEU has endowed the EU with borrowing, spending, and taxing powers.

EU Fiscal Capacity: Legal Integration After Covid-19 and the War in Ukraine argues that the NGEU constiutes a profound overhaul in the EU architecture of economic governance. Moving away from the fiscal surveillance shown in response to the euro-crisis, the EU has adopted a strategy of fiscal federalism more akin to the United States.

The return of war in Europe following 75 years of peace has caused yet more socio-economic damage for the EU. Occuring as Europe was slowly re-emerging from the pandemic, the war in Ukraine has disrupted supply chains, increased humanitarian assistance costs, and generated an energy crisis. Within the context of war, the limitations of the current EU constitutional arrangements have yet again been exposed. EU Fiscal Capacity argues that the EU needs to retain the NGEU as a permanent feature of EMU.

The first book to analyse how the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine have affected Europe's Economic & Monetary Union from an EU law and policy perspective, this book is a must read for policy makers and students of European law and politics alike.

Federico Fabbrini, Full Professor of European Law, School of Law and Government, Dublin City University

Federico Fabbrini is Full Professor of EU Law at Dublin City University in Ireland and a Fellow in Law, Ethics and Public Policy at Princeton University, in the United States. He is the Founding Director of the Brexit Institute and is the PI of the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence REBUILD ('Recovery of Europe, Budget of the Union: Integration, Law & Democracy') project. Federico holds a PhD in law from the European University Institute and has been awarded the Charlemagne Prize fellowship for his research on the future of Europe and was also made a knight of the Order of the Star of Italy in 2021. He is the author of three monographs with Oxford University Press, Brexit & the Future of the European Union (2020), Economic Governance in Europe (2016), and Fundamental Rights in Europe (2014). And he is also the editor of four edited volumes titled The Law & Politics of Brexit (Volume I-IV).