Rules-politics and events-politics

The feeling that the slightest hiccough can take the European Union to the edge of the abyss is attributable to the metamorphosis it has undergone over recent decades, from a structure devoted purely to “rules-politics” to a set-up also capable of engaging in “events-politics”. But insight into this gradual transformation is lacking. We will not understand the new Europe as long as we continue to look through the lens of the old.

That a revolution is happening before our eyes is the central tenet of this book. Over the past 30 years the operating procedure of the Union has changed fundamentally, with regard not just to who takes the decisions, and how and where they are taken, but to the way the Union is perceived, the way people observe European politics and why now more than ever they are demanding a direct say in a shared political life. It is a process of slow trends, shifting power relations and altered mentalities. All these changes have been accelerated, and sometimes exposed, by the acute shock of the pandemic. The urgency of the Covid crisis makes an interim analysis indispensable. What is happening? What has changed?

The institutions of the Union were originally designed principally to create a market and keep it in balance. This rules-politics is an ingenious mechanism that produces consensus and support, but it works only within the agreed system, and furthermore by dint of the fiction that history proceeds along predictable lines. In events-politics the aim is to get a grip on unforeseen, unanticipated situations. This form of political action is played out not within an established framework but precisely at moments when the framework itself is put to the test, in the most extreme cases by a war or catastrophe. In 2008 it was the credit crisis, when the economy refused any longer to adhere to the models relied upon by government bureaucracies. The response to an unforeseen situation can sometimes be to create a new regulatory framework, in which case we witness an interaction between events-politics and rules-politics, in a fairly common sequence. However, an acute political crisis demands that exceptional decisions are taken (not something that rules-politics is geared to).