The COVID-19 Crisis and the Reshaping of Multi-Level Governance in the European Union: A Paired Comparison of Germany and Italy

The outbreak of COVID-19 challenged the democratic governance and economic performance of EU member states. Most national governments implemented restrictions on social and economic life in order to mitigate the circulation of the Sars-CoV-2 virus; at the same time, the resulting economic costs were financed by a combination of national and common debts. Eventually, the combination of health, political, and economic crises prompted national political executives to find collective solutions to the emergency. This chapter assesses the linkage between national responses and EU policy outputs. To what extent do variations among countries’ policies account for the EU reaction? How did EU policy affect patterns of national political governance? The empirical analysis presents a paired comparison of Germany and Italy, which are introduced as illustrative cases. Overall, it suggests that the observed shift in EU policy from fiscal consolidation to debt mutualization was the indirect outcome of particular choices of national crisis management. Yet, states’ decision-making convergence at the EU level affected national political processes differently, depending on countries’ idiosyncrasies. The findings contribute to the debate about the interconnection between national responses to crises and EU policy.