The Covid-19 crisis has challenged the European Union (EU) and its member states. Political leaders have made contested decisions that restrain civil liberties. The EU and European governments have been pressured internally and externally to prove that they are capable to address the multifaceted crisis situation ensuing from the global pandemic. Leaders of the EU have established a historic recovery and resilience fund to help the economies of member states; however, the crisis has also highlighted existing challenges for resilient democratic institutions and deepened cleavages within the EU regarding, for example, questions of democratic norms and the rule of law.

EU and Covid-19 Research Fellow: Anja Thomas, anja.thomas@eui.eu

Projects and publications

The European Governance and Politics Programme at the Robert Schumann Centre for Advanced Studies hosts a cluster of projects dealing with Europe and the EU in the Covid-19 crisis.

Publications

• Borbáth, Endre, Sophie Hunger, Swen Hutter and Ioana-Elena Oana (2021), “Civic and Political Engagement during the Multifaceted COVID-19 Crisis”, Swiss Political Science Review 
• Volpi, Elisa, Lorenzo Cicchi and Tobias Widmann (forthcoming), “Pandemic frames: How is the European Union narrated by Italian (populist) parties during Covid-19’s first wave in Italy”, in Calossi, Enrico and Paola Imperatore (eds.), Populism in Contemporary Italian Parties: Actors and Processes in Times of Crisis, Pisa University Press.

Conferences and seminars

• Covid-19, the eurozone crisis and parliamentary democracy in the EU? Domestic parliamentary debates in France and Germany
  (15 October 2021) Paper presented by Anja Thomas at the “Representative Democracy in Crisis Mode: The Sovereign Debt Crisis and the COVID-19 Pandemic compared” conference, organized by Aleksandra Maatsch, Edgars Eihmanis & Eric Miklin 
• The politics of Covid-19: consolidation or transformation of the European cleavage structure? (video)
  (29 September 2021) EGPP Research Seminar with Daniele Caramani & Lorenzo Cicchi
• The Covid-19 pandemic transforming parliaments and democracy: Emerging practices for representation and policy-making across Europe
  (30 August-3 September 2021) Participation in a panel in the section at the ECPR General Conference
• Covid-19: Resilience and adaptation of the EU’s legislative process (video)
  (16 June 2021) EGPP Research Seminar with Selma Bendjaballah & Valentin Kreilinger
• Testing Europe’s representative democracy in the COVID-19 crisis
  (10-12 June 2021) EGPP panel in the section ‘The European Union and Covid-19: Response and Impact’ at Bi-annual Conference of the Standing Group on the European Union of the ECPR
• Europe’s New Fiscal Union (video)
  (2 June 2021) EGPP Research Seminar with Pierre Schlosser
• The Adoption of the EU’s Covid Recovery Plan: Policy Shift, Legal Engineering, and Institutional Transformation? (video)
  (26 May 2021) EGPP Research Seminar with Bruno de Witte
• A Republic of Europe? European democracy after the pandemic (video)
  (5 May 2021) Video recording of Conversations for the Future of Europe with Ulrike Guérot
• Populism in Contemporary Italian Parties: Actors and Processes in Times of Crisis
  (29 April 2021) Presentation of book chapter “Pandemic frames: How is the European Union narrated by Italian (populist) parties during Covid-19’s first wave in Italy” by Lorenzo Cicchi, Elisa Volpi & Tobias Widmann
• A Democratic Panopticon for the Recovery Fund as a new form of permanent citizen Involvement in EU decision-making (video)
  (14 April 2021) Video recording of Conversations for the Future of Europe with Kalypso Nicolaïdis
• Testing Europe’s Democratic Legitimacy in the Covid-19 Crisis
  (16 February 2021) EGPP workshop with contributions chiefly – but not exclusively – from the EU and Covid-19 projects hosted by the EGPP.
• No more saints and sinners: Tracing German preference formation in the EU’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic (video)
  (13 January 2021) EGPP Seminar Series with Amandine Crespy & Lucas Schramm
• The German presidency as an institutional role: three theses on its impact on the German government’s ‘word and deed’ regarding the EU recovery fund (video)
  (04 December 2020) Debate in German with Anja Thomas at the German Political Science Association (DVPW)
• Postfunctionalism Reversed: Solidarity and Rebordering during the Corona-crisis (video)
  (4 November 2020) EGPP Seminar Series with Philipp Genschel
• The EU’s nature and democratic legitimacy in light of the Covid-19 crisis
  (9 October 2020) Roundtable in French with Anja Thomas at Les Rendez-vous de l’histoire de Blois

Opinions/media coverage

• Is it possible to govern the European Union?
  (9 October 2020) Interview in French with Anja Thomas for Radio show Carrefour de l’Europe
• Corona-Virus: the role of nonviolence
  (2020) Podcast in Italian with Claudio Radaelli and Roberto Baldoli