Democratic legitimacy in times of European upheaval

The European Union is in turmoil. Under the pressure of the Covid-19 crisis – an economic emergency as well as a healthcare crisis – it is reforming its economic governance and it is expanding, for the first time, into the field of healthcare. The climate emergency – a slow-burning, and now urgent, crisis no less likely than economic outbursts to shape integration – has pushed Europe to take the global lead in industrial reform; as aptly remarked by The Economist (Charlemagne, May 1st 2021) the EU’s “European Green Deal” may seem fuzzy from outside, but in fact it is a “three decade project that will up-end the continent, in much in the same way the Single Market did from the 1980s” (p. 22). These three areas of development – fiscal union, welfare provision, and environmental policy – mark a leap forward in integration which, albeit less abrupt than past treaty changes, will change the way the European Union works to a larger extent than most recent reforms.