The EU’s Recovery Plan and the Constitutional System of the European Union – Between Rupture and Continuity

The EU’s Recovery Plan is the cornerstone of the European economic response to the COVID-19 crisis. By its size, its unprecedented features, and the new level of European solidarity it embodies, it is a historical initiative, which will lastingly influence the trajectory of European integration. The Plan also sets in motion or exacerbates a certain number of constitutional evolutions which have the potential to reshape the EU polity, and its constitutional foundations. The Plan indeed impacts the power structures, the institutional arrangements and certain core substantive rules of the European Union and the Eurozone. This research project will provide the first comprehensive assessment of the Recovery Plan, of the constitutional changes, transformations and continuities that it embodies, and of its overall impact on the constitutional architecture of the European Union. In the light of a set of constitutional benchmarks (power allocation, budgetary law, ‘macroeconomic’ constitution, institutional balance), the project analyses the Recovery Plan, and identifies, in a dynamic manner, its wider repercussions for the EU polity and its constitutional framework.