The Post-Enlargement, Post-Lisbon and Post-Crisis European Union and Norm Enforcement: Towards an Internal EU Conditionality?

Abstract

The article analyses the changes in norm enforcement in the EU that were
triggered by the Eurozone crisis. It attempts to demonstrate that the
Eurozone crisis contributed to a “transplantation” of conditionality
instruments (which traditionally exist within the EU’s external relations) into
the internal operations of the European Union. In particular, the article
identifies which new internal rule-enforcement mechanisms of the EU share
common structural features with the external EU conditionality (e.g. a
vague legal framework; the use of the expertise of non-EU actors; an excess
of competencies conferred to the EU; the institutional weakening of the
European Commission, the European Parliament and the Court of Justice;
the format of the sanctions). The article comes to the conclusion that the
formation of the EU’s internal conditionality occurred mainly within the
instruments aimed at the crisis management of public finances of the
Eurozone states (the EFSF, the EFSM, and the ESM), but it also concludes
that there was an expansion of the new EU conditionality into other areas of
the European integration, such as the Schengen cooperation and cohesion
policy.