Abstract Why has the EU been unable to constrain destructive dissensus over liberal democracy, after it has been institutionalised and transformed into illiberal domestic regimes, and represented by illiberal governments which participate in the EU institutions? Once institutionalised at the national level, illiberal democracy has come to be protected by the EU, an unintended effect of a decision-making process within which the defence of national sovereignty has become a central concern, while the interpretation of national sovereignty is left to national governments. This has been the prevailing discourse of the post-Maastricht political process, embedded in an intergovernmental structure that fosters unanimity in the deliberation process, to protect the possible successful dissensus over liberal democracy institutionalised in (some) EU member states. Here comes the institutional entanglement in the European Union.

The mainstream literature on differentiated integration (DI) has underestimated governance differentiation (the institutionalisation of two distinct decision-making regimes, supranational and intergovernmental), focusing only on policy differentiation. Consequently, it has not analytically considered the domination effects of the intergovernmental governance of core state power policies (as budgetary and fiscal policies), where the European Council enjoys a decision-making centrality. Comparing the outcome of two existential crises, the sovereign debt crisis of the early 2010s, and the economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis of the early 2020s, the chapter shows how the European Council had to move from an "unconstrained intergovernmental" to a "constrained supranational" approach, exactly for neutralising the domination implications of intergovernmentalism, and the populist reaction to them. A governance system controlled exclusively by national governmental leaders cannot structurally meet the promise to guarantee equality among its Member States as celebrated by the EU Treaties. Not only in Brussels, but also in the mainstream literature on DI, there is too much complacency with the status quo.

The chapter discusses the Spitzenkandidaten process in the light of the theory of parliamentary federation. In fact, the Spitzenkandidaten is a political innovation, introduced in 2014, aiming to gradually transform the EU (and its functioning) in the direction of a supranational parliamentary federation. The chapter will be organized as follows. First, it will consider the proposals on the democratization of the EU executive power, of which the Spitzenkandidaten is a variant, emerged in the Conference on the Future of Europe (Cofeu) as the latest example of the debate on the issue. Second, it will consider the institutional features of the EU executive power, showing the latter's dual nature, as European Council and European Commission. Third, it will develop a theory of parliamentary government in federal systems, identifying the systemic conditions of its historical sustainability. Fourth, it will compare the EU decision-making structure with those systemic conditions to test whether the two are compatible. The conclusion, finally, will bring home the argument that parliamentary government in the EU constitutes a puzzle difficult to compose, also with a change of the Treaty.

This article investigates how traditionally anti-European Union (EU) right-wing parties and leaders in four EU member states reinterpreted their relation with the EU in the post-Brexit period (2016-2022). Either for the political opportunity structure's constraints or for the costs triggered by Brexit, right-wing European nationalists had to redefine their role in remaining in the EU. We conceptualize as 'sovereignism' their attempt to endogenize nationalism in the EU. Relying on discourse analysis, this article shows that right-wing sovereignism criticized the supranational character and the centralized policy system that developed within the EU. However, right-wing sovereignism differed in the rationale of its criticism, based more on an economic discourse in Western Europe and more on a cultural discourse in Eastern Europe, as well as on the policies to repatriate. The sovereignist approach of nationalist right-wing parties and leaders would lead to the nationally differentiated disintegration of the EU.

How did the European Union (EU) deal with the crises of the 2010s and 2020s? These crises arose in policy realms that were the province of national governments, so the European Council was the driving institution for managing them. National governments were able to take decisions, but their decisions were contradictory and unaccountable, and regularly hindered by divisions between them. In order to manage a policymaking process dominated by the claims of national and sub-regional governments, Sergio Fabbrini argues that intergovernmental governance has had to transform the EU into an international organization. Fabbrini shows that differentiated integration would further distance the EU from the project of an 'ever closer union' and, on the basis of a comparative federalism approach, he proposes an alternative paradigm of a multi-tier Europe with a federalist core to balance national sovereignties and supranational authority.

Next Generation EU (NGEU), the new temporary program (2021-2026) decided by the European Union (EU) to deal with the economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, represents a substantial break with respect to previous EU responses to economic crises. After identifying the discontinuity introduced by the NGEU compared to the governance response to the sovereign debt crisis of the early 2010s, the paper investigates the conditions under which a new paradigm of economic governance would emerge and not remain simply a major one-off, when the EU should deal with an exogenous shock. Those conditions are conceptualised in terms of three trilemmas. The possibility of the NGEU becoming the harbinger of a new paradigm of economic governance will depend on the solutions of those trilemmas - favouring the EU supranational institutions, promoting a new policy mix in fiscal policy, and implementing national reforms coherent with the EU's aims notwithstanding national electoral cycles. The solutions are then evaluated according to the 'Monnet Compatibility Test' (MCT) which implies coherence between the institutional, economic and political features of the new economic governance arrangements.

The article investigates the political determinants of fiscal governance in the EU. Since the outset of the Economic and Monetary Union, the EU adopted a model of fiscal regulation which attempted to keep government debt and deficit in check to avoid “fiscal dominance.” With the 2020 pandemic, the EU suspended the fiscal rules and adopted a program, Next Generation EU, having some features of a central fiscal capacity. On the bases of comparative federal analysis, the article discusses the political conditions that preside over the formation of a stable central fiscal capacity, here conceptualized as the “triple-T model.” We argue that, in unions of states, the determinants of a central fiscal capacity consist in the appearance of an existential threat, in the reciprocal trust among national governments for answering the threat with central resources, and an adequately long time planning horizon of national policymakers to apprehend the benefits of those common resources for all member states. On these bases, the article outlines the contour of a new EU fiscal set up which encompasses an EU central fiscal capacity and robust budget rules framing the fiscal choices of national authorities.

This thematic issue examines two main research questions: What are the features, the determinants, and the implications of fiscal integration in a system of multilevel governance like the EU? And, what can the post-pandemic EU learn from established federations when it comes to fiscal integration? We attempt to conceptualize the patterns of EU fiscal integration. In so doing, we identify eight instruments of fiscal integration in a federal or multilevel polity, equally divided between fiscal capacity and fiscal regulation, depending on the side of the budget and the mode of integration (autonomous or dependent). For instance, as part of the fiscal capacity instrument of integration, we propose to distinguish between revenue and expenditure capacity. Revenue capacity is then further divided into tax capacity, based on EU/federal taxes, and budgetary capacity, based on non-independent sources, for instance, contributions from the member states. Expenditure capacity is divided into autonomous spending capacity, meaning direct spending by the EU, and a dependent transfer capacity, where the EU merely distributes resources (both grants and loans) to the member states.

The Italian experience of 2019 has a general importance. Within a month (August 2019), Italy moved from being governed by an anti-EU government to a pro-EU government. A parliamentary change in the party composition of the government took place, although the new government continued to be supported by the same plurality party and led by the same prime minister. How to interpret the rise and fall of the Italian anti-EU government? Although domestic actors' and parties' calculations played an intervening role in deciding governmental change, nevertheless those calculations were made on the basis of a structure of constraints on the Italian government caused by the country's participation in the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). Notwithstanding that the 2020 pandemic has led to a suspension of those interdependence constraints, the 2019 Italian experience indicates the limits that cannot be overcome by governments operating within that interdependence.

The research paper aims to investigate nationalism in the post-Brexit period (2016- 2021). Because of the political and economic costs triggered by Brexit, European nationalisms have had to redefine their role remaining in the European Union (EU), a necessity made even more stringent by the pandemic crisis and the Russian aggression of Ukraine. We conceptualize as ‘sovereignism’ the attempt to endogenise nationalism in the EU. The research has thus identified commonalities and differences in the sovereignist narrative of western and eastern EU member states. All sovereignists criticized the supranational character (institutional sovereignism) and the centralized policy system (policy sovereignism) which has developed within the EU. However, sovereignists differed on the rationale of their criticism, based more on an economic discourse (economic sovereignism) in western Europe and more on a cultural discourse (cultural sovereignism) in eastern Europe. The sovereignist narrative had clear opportunistic traits, whose outcome, if successful, would lead to the differentiated disintegration of the EU.

The article aims to explain the 2020 approval of ‘Next Generation EU’, the program for helping the EU member states to go beyond the pandemic. The approval of NG-EU is interpreted in the context of a confrontation between three distinct interstate coalitions, coordinating a group of countries from the north (the Frugal coalition) against the core of continental countries (the Solidarity coalition) and then a group of countries from the east (the Sovereignty coalition) against the previous two coalitions allied together. Based on the discursive institutionalism’s approach, the article reconstructs the policy discourse shared by the members of each coalition, coherently utilized along the fault lines which conceptually structured the 2020 policy-making process. The policy coherence and the organizational consistency of the three coalition cores affected the EU policy-making process more than the inter-institutional relations between the Commission and national governments. The article concludes advancing arguments for interpreting the sub-regional segmentation of the EU.

Differentiation has become a central topic of debate in the EU. Generally, it is considered a positive device for advancing integration in crucial policies, letting the unwilling states opt out from the new regimes. However, the debate has not sufficiently acknowledged that policy differentiation has been made possible by governance differentiation. It was the 1992 Maastricht Treaty's decision to inaugurate an intergovernmental regime for core state power policies, distinct from the supranational regime regulating single market policies, that allowed differentiation to flourish. Differentiation and intergovernmentalism are thus inter-connected. During multiple crises of the last decade, intergovernmental governance has shown its undemocratic effects, thus soliciting a critical reappraisal of the differentiation logic. The federalisation of the EU appears a more promising alternative strategy for advancing integration and, at the same time, meeting the democratic expectations of the EU. This analytical exercise speaks to the Conference on the Future of Europe.

The research paper investigates the political accountability of the EU’s executive power, distinguishing between institutional and electoral patterns. It discusses the main integration theories, showing their analytical unilateralism in identifying the EU’s executive power and in conceptualizing its accountability patterns. Then, it analyses the executive power’s accountability in democratic federal systems, comparing coming together federations, where executive power’s political accountability is institutional, with holding together federations, where executive power’s political accountability is electoral. The research paper investigates the EU executive power, focusing on two basic decision-making regimes (supranational and intergovernmental) to deal with different policy areas. Using the comparative federalism’s perspective, the research paper argues that the executive power’s accountability is institutional in the supranational regime (although it manages issues of low political salience), it is neither institutional nor electoral in the intergovernmental regime (which manages issues of high political salience). The EU’s decision-making structure is not only differentiated (as in none of the current federations), but this differentiation disincentives the executive power’s accountability in crucial policies’ realms.

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The article investigates the political accountability of the EU's executive power (the elephant). It starts from a discussion of some recent contributions to the analysis of the EU's executive power showing their difficulties in conceptualizing its accountability patterns. Then, it analyses executive power's accountability in democratic federal systems, comparing coming-together federations, where executive power's political accountability is institutional, with holding-together federations, where executive power's political accountability is electoral. Thus, it conceptualizes the EU's executive power as consisting in a dual decision-making regime (supranational and intergovernmental) to deal with different policy areas. Using the comparative federalism perspective, the article argues that executive power's accountability is institutional in the supranational regime (although it manages issues of low domestic political salience) while it is neither institutional nor electoral in the intergovernmental regime (which manages issues of high domestic political salience). This differentiation works against the elephant's accountability in crucial policy realms.

This article analyses the approach of the Conte government to the EU and its budgetary and migration policies. Because the Conte government was inaugurated on 1 June 2018, the article will compare its approach to EU policies with the Gentiloni government of the initial five months of the year. On both budgetary and migration policy, the Conte government marked a discontinuity with the previous government, pursuing a declared populist agenda. While the Gentiloni government operated within the EU financial and legal constraints, the Conte government rejected those constraints. However, the populist claims had to face the constraints of interdependence. Particularly in budgetary policy, in fact, the Conte government was forced to find a compromise with the other Eurozone member states and the Commission.

The article investigates the forms that political identities have assumed in the EU through the functioning of its institutions. On the basis of the analytical distinction between supranational and intergovernmental institutional settings, the article shows that such a dual decision-making system has generated a contradictory logic with regard to the construction of political identity. If the supranational institutions have aimed to construct a European political identity with state-like features, the intergovernmental institutions have instead operated to de-construct that identity in order to preserve the national identities of the member states. With the multiple post-Lisbon Treaty crises, not only has the contrast between the two concepts increased, but the competition among national identities within the intergovernmental setting has triggered their transformation into nationalist claims.