Un-Solvable Crises? Implementation and Differentiation in Multi-Level Crisis Regulatory Governance in the EU

EU recent crises are thought to create existential threats and disintegration pressures (Jones 2018; Laffan 2016), or lead to differentiation in the modes of integration (Schimmelfennig & Winzen 2019). However, if (some of) the responses to the Eurozone, refugee crises or Brexit have been analysed, we know little about how the implementation of crisis policies across level affects the EU ‘problem-solving’ capacity (Trein et al. 2019), and what are the effects of a regulatory approach to crises. Crises offer a considerable vantage point to study implementation and differentiation in regulatory governance. Indeed, since the crisis, the EU has strengthened its role and powers in crisis management by adopting a regulatory approach to crisis, seeking to adopt common norms and standards across member states in a variety of domains in order to increase cooperation and integration. This paper studies the differentiated implementation of four EU ‘crisis’ regulatory policies – i.e. interventions that set a framework to prevent, prepare for, and respond to crises that affect several member states or the whole union (banking, electricity, youth unemployment, invasive alien species). These policies present differing degrees of centralization or flexibility, and varying levels of prescriptiveness in how common rules should be implemented. The paper seeks to explain how variations in implementation affect the EU ‘crisis’ solving capacity, thereby contributing to regulatory governance and integration literatures. It shows that the varieties of implementation strategies depend on the characteristics of the policy, and that an unintended effect is a strengthening of national levels of government, which paradoxically produces both differentiation and a strengthening of the EU solving capacity. It relies on 145 qualitative interviews conducted within relevant EU institutions and national regulators from 5 EU member states (France, the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, and Spain). In other words, we demonstrate that despite an ever increasing regulatory integration logic, divergences at national level and in implementation affect EU regulatory governance and integration process, creating further complexities and policy differentiation.