
Conclusion
The coronavirus crisis has exposed large vulnerabilities in Europe’s economies and raised fundamental questions about the legitimacy and sustainability of the current economic settlement. This paper has posited that the post-coronavirus European political landscape could be marked by demands for a new social and economic contract. It assumes that citizens will expect and demand more of the state, and that states will seek to make themselves and their economies more resilient to global forces and future external shocks. As a consequence, the crisis has the potential to fundamentally shift Europe’s political economy towards a new balance between the state and the market. This new balance would likely emphasize a stronger and more interventionist role for the state, and a reduced openness to market forces.
Such a paradigm shift would have long-term implications for the governance of the EU. For member states, and especially eurozone countries, big changes in policy on taxation, trade, labour markets and industry would necessarily require consultation and adjustment at the EU level. This paper has argued that increasing the role of the state in several key policy areas could clash with fundamental tenets of the EU as it is today. However, the current political economy model is not set in stone – and neither is the type of European integration it has produced since the 1980s. The EU could be adapted and reformed to accommodate a more interventionist model. For this to happen, European integration should not be approached as a linear, one-way process in which it is impossible to change course or reverse steps that have been taken.
The coronavirus crisis provides Europe with a unique opportunity to evaluate the efficiency, sustainability and legitimacy of its economic settlement. As EU leaders assess the past and start planning for the future, they should think not simply of seeking to return to the pre-COVID-19 ‘normal’, but of how a more sustainable, balanced and fairer political economy can emerge from the crisis, and from there decide how the EU might need to be reformed to accommodate that. The real debate is therefore not whether the answer lies in ‘more Europe’ or ‘less Europe’ – to the extent that this implies a judgment on the value of integration per se – but about what kind of European ‘union’ is needed. A post-coronavirus Europe with a changed political economy will need reformed economic structures, a different political architecture, and thus a different EU.