The EU’s response to internal crises and emergencies: transforming competences, institutional balance, and policy directions?

For each of these three policy areas, the workshop seeks to map the EU reaction to the crises and emergencies that have tested the integration process and the framework created by the Lisbon Treaty. In particular, we are interested in studying the tools that the EU has used and developed to tackle these challenges, and in assessing the impact of the EU legal and policy measures on core elements of the EU constitutional framework such as the division of competences between the Union and the Member States, and the principle of institutional balance. The workshop also aims at analysing whether crisis and emergency responses have structurally changed the EU policy directions in the selected areas. Ultimately, has the crisis and emergency response re-shaped, or even transformed, the Union’s constitutional and political order?

The interdisciplinary workshop invites submissions from legal scholars and political scientists as well as researchers in other affiliated disciplines examining and assessing the EU’s responses in each of these three policy fields. 

We welcome contributions on these topics and other related issues: 

• The impact of the EU response to the COVID-19 pandemic on the division of competences in the health sector;

• The rise of new governance structures (e.g. agencies, hybrid bodies, etc) and tools (e.g. soft law, urgency procedure, etc) to address market disruptions caused by emergencies;

• The transformative effects of crises and emergencies in deepening economic integration within the EMU or entrenching differentiation among Member States, including the role of institutional actors such as the ECB, National Central Banks, the Commission, and national governments in these processes;

• The evolving interpretation of key EMU constitutional rules (including Articles 122 and 127(1) TFEU) and its implications for the EU’s preparedness for future crises, from the expansion of supranational fiscal capacity (e.g. EU common debt and MFF 2028–2034) to new dynamics in ECB–Council dialogue and cooperation;

• Judicial responses to the values and rule of law crisis and their impact on the vertical and horizontal division of powers and the Union’s constitutionalisation process;

• The expansive reading of EU legislative competences to create new mechanisms to protect EU values and the rule of law, and the role of Article 2 TEU in EU legislative and policy initiatives;

• Horizontal analyses of the EU responses across these three policy areas, comparing tools and methods used by the EU institutions and reflecting on the overall impact on the EU integration process.

Submission guidelines:

We invite abstracts of up to 500 words, outlining the research question, approach, and main argument of the paper. Accepted papers will be presented at the workshop, with an opportunity for selected contributions to be included in a special issue or another collective publication project.

Important dates: 

• Abstract submission deadline: November 21, 2025

• Notification of acceptance: December 1, 2025

• Papers submission deadline: March 9, 2026

• Workshop date: March 30 & 31, 2026