1. Research questions

The unforeseen return of activist government during the COVID-19 pandemic has already generated a rich and multi-disciplinary body of scholarship. Within this literature, authors have addressed issues as diverse as the resurgence of industrial policy,Footnote ¹ the adoption of more dynamic approaches to central banking,Footnote ² the transformation of fiscal policy,Footnote ³ and the renewed prominence of government interventionFootnote ⁴ – often comparing these developments with the forms of state interventionism that characterised advanced economies throughout the 20^th century.

Zooming in on European legal studies, additional issues emerge that are closely tied to the specific features of the EU’s economic constitution and that give the debate a distinctive flavour. In publishing this Symposium, we are fully aware that, at this juncture, only preliminary and tentative answers can be offered. We are grateful to European Law Open for hosting our effort, and we are keenly aware that much more work remains to be done to grasp the full complexity of this topic.

In order to frame our conversation, we decided to focus on four main research questions. We first invited our contributors to consider whether the shift toward state activism in the EU is contingent or structural. More specifically, we asked whether the recent return to state activism signals a fundamental transformation of the EU’s political economy – one that moves beyond the deeply ingrained neoliberal orientation of the Union – or whether it is merely an exceptional response to a series of overlapping crises that will ultimately subside, allowing the previous neoliberal trajectory to reassert itself.

Closely related to this is a second question: what type of state activism is the EU currently promoting? If the EU Treaties embody a neoliberal constitutional framework, it becomes crucial to examine what kind of interventionism such a framework can actually support. To put it simply: is the Union moving back toward a form of dirigisme reminiscent of the political-economic models of the Trente Glorieuses, or are we witnessing the emergence of a new – and perhaps more ambiguous – form of state interventionism that sustains the neoliberal order established since Maastricht by different means?

Thirdly, we were interested in gauging the extent to which this turn to activist government is compatible with the existing EU Treaty framework. We asked contributors to reflect on whether state interventionism can be enabled through evolutionary interpretations of Treaty norms, or whether more far-reaching Treaty reform will eventually be required to sustain this course of political economy.

The fourth and final question concerns the legitimacy of this evolving policy paradigm. What are the democratic credentials of the EU’s new activist policy course? To what extent is this renewed government activism exposed to (or insulated from) democratic contestation and social conflict? And what does this shift imply for the nature of the EU polity as it moves toward a more activist form of political rule: does it mark a critical, perhaps decisive, step toward state-building, or does it instead consolidate the distinctive constitutional and political path of supranationalism?

2. Overview

These research questions have been analysed from several perspectives by the authors of the contributions published in this volume. They cover a wide range of issues, with a variety of focuses, spanning from a comprehensive analysis of new forms of governance in the EU and the transformation of legal culture in the new phase of activism, to more detailed accounts of the new EU political economy, the securitisation of EU competition policy, the specificities of the monetary policy developed by the European Central Bank in the aftermath of the financial crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic in response to national fragmentation, and the reshaping of the EU industrial policy. They display a variety of approaches, methodologies and ideas on the current wave of EU activism, which generate a panoply of data and arguments that, while not leading a comprehensive and homogenous picture, significantly contribute to the scholarly debate that is unfolding.

In Rule in the New European Union, Floris De Witte explains the new wave of activism by the EU as a development that cannot be solely attributed to the external pressures – particularly those arising since the Covid-19 pandemic – which have driven tighter control and deeper integration in the name of resilience. Rather, he claims that state activism is part of a wider state-building trajectory which has been underway for a much longer period, and has focused not only on economic governance, but also on the strengthening of the institutional framework more generally, and on the building of a set of values and a narrative legitimising the EU as a state-like entity built around the shared values or a European ‘way of life’. In particular, in the last two decades the legal and financial framework has been significantly strengthened, together with a centralisation of powers, and a narrative emphasising the EU values and its strategic autonomy and sovereignty.

According to the De Witte, ‘what the EU does has an effect on how the EU does it’, and the way in which the EU has evolved shows that its new activism is not a contingent reaction to external pressures, but rather ‘a structural process of system closure and polity formation’, characterised by a new form of governance. As examples of this, he refers to the development of the policies on borders control, capital markets regulation, and the establishment of an EU health union, where external pressures have led to the creation of new frameworks and infrastructure and the centralisation of power and resources.

De Witte considers this process as a move away from indirect rule towards direct rule, where domestic institutions and processes are sidelined, and a new form of governance emerges. Applying Tilly’s model on the role of trust networks in governance, he analyses the role of coercion, capital and commitment as factors that have led to a new EU governance system. In particular, commitment refers to the role of trust networks (such as churches, trade unions, NGOs, etc), which allow individuals to pool their actions for shared long-term objectives, and interact with state authority, thereby guaranteeing legitimacy and stability to it. While coercion and capital have been often and successfully used for this purpose at the EU level, commitment is still limited, due to the weakness of the democratic structure of the EU, and the lack of European cultural standardisation and identity-formation processes. In this context, trust networks continue to be centred at the local and national level, rather than at the European one, and this significantly undermines the possibility for the EU to generate the commitment that is necessary in this new phase of activism.

In order to change this situation, radical reforms would be needed, but De Witte considers that this is highly unlikely in the present context, because ‘the EU is a type of polity with limited capacity to internalise political contestation and social conflict’, which are a direct consequence of the new wave of activism, and whose negative effects on the integration process are increasingly felt. As a consequence, he expects that future developments in the EU will rather lead to authoritarian forms of rule, instead of democratic ones, as moving away from the existing pattern would require a new comprehensive model, which is unlikely to emerge from the conflicting pressures for more direct control by the EU, and for more national control by the Member States.

The article recalls that elements of EU activism have developed much earlier than the financial and pandemic crises, at least since the fundamental political choices that have led to the Treaty of Maastricht, which has established a fully new (even if highly unstable and problematic) architecture of European integration. It also emphasises the crucial role of establishing a set of values and a narrative that would legitimise the EU as an increasingly centralised and State-like entity, and the consequences of having failed to establish a true European ethos, as commitment (embodied in trust networks) is still firmly embedded at the national and local level. The next step in this kind of analysis would be to investigate in a comprehensive and dynamic manner the reasons of this failure. In spite of the negative outlook, as further centralisation (direct rule) would require a stronger democratic structure that seems out of reach in the current EU polity, it seems to us that the expectation that this trajectory will lead to an authoritarian form of rule, while possible, does not sufficiently take into account alternative possibilities, such as prolonged stalemate or a revival of national activist policymaking. Which of these alternatives is more likely to materialise will depend on both endogenous and exogenous factors, and may vary across policy areas in ways that are difficult to predict.

In The Secret Life of the EU Treaties: NGEU and the Politics of the EU’s ‘Living Constitution’, Päivi Leino-Sandberg takes issue with the implications of the Union’s turn to state activism for legal culture. She focuses on the widespread reliance on antiformalist constitutional interpretation by institutional lawyers and EU legal scholars and argues that this interpretive strategy has been the dominant channel through which the shift in EU political economy has been prompted – a development she considers problematic, given its precarious legal and democratic credentials. Indeed, by embracing the ‘living constitution’ doctrine rather casually, the emerging legal culture seems, on the one hand, anxious to address immediate functional concerns, even at the cost of suboptimal policy solutions; on the other, it appears relatively indifferent to the democratic losses that follow from advancing European integration mainly through legal engineering. These concerns are substantiated through a detailed examination of Next Generation EU (NGEU), a programme which, she claims, undermines the principle of conferral, introduces opaque and weakly democratic modes of governance, and ultimately fails to deliver convincingly on its stated aims.

Two broader considerations arise from this provocative argument. First, the shift in EU legal culture described by Leino-Sandberg recalls the debates in both Europe and the United States roughly a century ago, when the transition from laissez-faire to activist government displaced formalist legal culture.Footnote ⁵ Then as now, antiformalism and the ‘living constitution’ doctrine emerged as characteristic features of constitutional systems adapting to state activism. Thus, a certain degree of constitutional flexibility and doctrinal elasticity seems plausible even within a treaty framework, such as that of the EU, in which the purposive dimension seems predominant.Footnote ⁶ Having said this, one need not share Leino-Sandberg’s doctrinal defence of formalism to agree with her democratic critique of the EU’s turn to state activism. For, while during the New Deal the rise of antiformalism was sustained by a powerful political party movement, so extensive as to rival the legitimacy inherent in the formal constitutional amending process,Footnote ⁷ in the EU this shift in constitutional interpretation occurs largely through decision-making processes with dubious democratic pedigree and, most importantly, in the absence of any comparable degree of popular mobilisation of the kind presupposed by Treaty-amendment procedures.

Second, it may be argued that legal formalism has never commanded much influence in EU legal doctrine, where evolutionary legal discourses and doctrinal innovations in support of ‘an ever closer Union’ have long prevailed.Footnote ⁸ Leino-Sandberg is aware of this, but suggests that, with the embrace of state activism, antiformalism has reached unprecedented levels, particularly in policy fields central to democratic politics, such as fiscal policy. In her account, this development, as materialised with NGEU, heralds a form of unconstrained state activism that is becoming a permanent feature of EU governance. On this point, we believe the jury is still out. At the time of writing, the fate of NGEU does not fully confirm her assessment. Far from being reiterated, the programme and its governance model appear increasingly exceptional and non-replicable, as witnessed by the failure of the proposed Sovereignty Fund,Footnote ⁹ the difficult implementation of the Draghi report, and the contents of the Union’s rearmament plan.Footnote ¹⁰ All indicates that NGEU was a one-off measure, and that the treaties’ constraints remain more robust than Leino-Sandberg is prepared to acknowledge.

In Europe and the Race to Structural Transformation: A Narrow Path Ahead, Francesco Saraceno and Floriana Cerniglia call for reorienting the EU’s political economy in a more activist direction. In line with the proposals of the Draghi Report on Competitiveness, they argue that the green and digital transitions, along with the pursuit of strategic autonomy, require a broad mix of regulatory and interventionist policies. They acknowledge that the EU’s longstanding regulatory framework remains essential in ensuring that dominant market actors do not thrive at the expense of society’s welfare goals. At the same time, they strongly advocate for a more prominent role for public investment, especially during this period of structural transformation. In this light, they contend that both fiscal and industrial policy must be brought back to the forefront, after decades of marginalisation.

Nonetheless, the authors note that under current political and legal conditions, reasons for optimism are slim, as illustrated by the dissipation of the momentum created by the adoption of NGEU. In their view, without a robust supranational fiscal capacity, the EU’s only viable path toward structural transformation lies in revising the recently approved Stability and Growth Pact and introducing a ‘golden rule’ to safeguard national public investment. Yet, in an environment of relatively high public debt, stimulating investment through state borrowing would prove ineffective without parallel measures to secure access to capital markets to the most indebted national governments. To this end, the authors propose establishing a temporary fund for European Strategic Autonomy, modelled on SURE, as a forerunner to a more permanent European Debt Agency. Such an agency would gradually replace Eurozone countries’ debt with perpetual loans, to be repaid under conditions linked to fiscal compliance and financial capacity.

From a policy standpoint, the narrow path outlined by the authors sketches a plausible course for the EU’s political economy. What is less probable, however, is the political and legal feasibility of their proposals. Politically, they presuppose a degree of intergovernmental consensus that, though modest compared to completing EMU, remains out of reach. Legally, several questions also remain unresolved. It is uncertain, for instance, whether an instrument modelled on SURE could be introduced without relying on Article 122 TFEU – a legal basis the authors themselves recognise as problematic. Likewise, whether the innovative proposal of a European Debt Agency could be reconciled with the no bail-out clause under Article 125 TFEU remains an open question.

In The Securitisation of Competition in the EU, Ophelia Bentley and Kathleen McNamara focus on the fundamental shift in EU competition policy, characterised by a growing emphasis on security as a major goal of EU action. The authors argue that the current wave of market activism is structurally changing the relationship between market and public regulation, not only in the internal dimension, but also in relation to the geo-political positioning of the EU, characterised by an increasingly polarised and unstable setting. This shift implies a significant move away from the traditional neoliberal model of economic integration on which the EU was built, which challenges the political model of European integration, based on a fundamental (albeit varying over time) distinction between technocratic economic governance and intergovernmental political decisions.

In this context, competition policy is evolving, too, gradually moving away from a system of disembedded market-enabling mechanisms. The consequence of the shift in the aim of competition policy is that ‘market and security logics are being brought together’, generating pressure to change the instruments and the decision-making processes, with stronger EU involvement and control, implying significant political and democratic consequences, whose impact might prove controversial and divisive.

The analysis is based on the idea that the narrative of the aims and scope of competition policy is essential in establishing this new vision of the EU mission in this field, related to security and geo-political strategies. This narrative is evident in two major expert reports published in 2024, the Draghi Report on EU competitiveness (which compares the EU situation with its major world competitors, the US and China), and the Letta report on the internal market, both setting a plan for reform.

Bentley and McNamara’s theory of securitisation of EU competition policy is tested through a systematic analysis of the language (critical discourse analysis) used in the annual reports of the Commission’s DG Competition over a ten year period, from 2013 to 2023. The findings show an increased use of several key arguments that refer to security, and an emphasis on geo-political and geo-economic factors affecting the Union policy on competition. First, crisis and a state of emergency at the international level require action in disparate policy areas (functional spill-over); second, the international scale implies focusing on the external orientation of the policy; third, action needs to be focused on ensuring EU strategic autonomy in the global context; finally, the external dimension requires overcoming existing fragmentation within Europe, strengthening EU powers.

The study shows that the ‘new normal’ of securitisation of the EU does not only impact policies that are immediately linked to this notion, such as defence, but also areas that have been traditionally considered as insulated from immediate political pressure due to their technocratic features, as competition policy. While it is unclear what will be the political implications of this shift, according to the authors it is evident that it is here to stay, as it is ‘generated by a multitude of long-term, structural changes’. It will consequently press for a more general revision of the EU law-making structure and its relationship with the Member States, which will influence the future of the European integration process.

While discourse analysis provides a key benchmark to assess and measure the gradual shift in the main aims of EU competition policy, it is important to underline that there might be tensions between the way in which the aims are formulated in policy documents and the actual implementation of them, which may depend on factors and pressures that are not explicitly stated (as, for example, internal pressures among DGs inside the Commission, or external pressure by influential stakeholders). The systematic analysis of relevant documents, therefore, is a useful tool shedding light on issues and trends that require further investigation through other types on empirical analysis.

Monetary policy and central banking provide a crucial vantage point from which to assess the EU’s turn toward activist government. In Central Bank Activism as a Constitutional Struggle: The ECB’s Mandate, Michael Ioannidis argues that the mandate of the European Central Bank, as defined in the EU Treaties, is sufficiently flexible to accommodate a more interventionist political economy. In particular, he highlights the potential of the ECB’s secondary mandate in Article 127 TFEU – the duty to support the Union’s economic policies with a view to achieving the EU’s objectives – as a legal basis capable of aligning ECB action with broader EU and national interventionism in this new economic context.

According to Ioannidis, neither democratic objections, nor the requirement that monetary policy conform to the principle of an open market economy with free competition preclude a more activist stance by the ECB. As for the democratic concern, he maintains that the democratic legitimacy of activist monetary programmes can be secured through their connection to economic policy goals established by EU institutions, together with the checks and balances embedded in internal ECB decision-making procedures. Regarding the open-market-economy principle, Ioannidis contends that it too can be interpreted flexibly: rather than operating as an absolute prohibition on ECB interference in market functioning, the principle could permit proportionate interventions justified by the need to address market failures, or to support EU-endorsed economic policies. At the same time, Ioannidis concedes that even under a more creative interpretation of its mandate, the ECB ultimately faces constitutional limits. Notably, these constraints would prevent the ECB from compensating for the absence of political consensus at the EU level on far-reaching activist measures.

The ECB turn to activism, however, can also be subject to a more sceptical appraisal. In EU Monetary Policy in A Quandary, Kostas Lapavitsas and Matteo Giordano challenge the widespread view that the significant increase of spending by the European Central Bank in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2007–2009 is a sign of a new permanent interventionist stance. During the crisis, the ECB intervened massively on European financial markets, refinancing loans to commercial banks and buying public and private securities, through the issuing of banknotes and commercial bank reserve deposits. The ECB backed the European money market and created a new monetary policy framework that protected banks, with the result of often transferring risks from the private sector to the public one. In 2022, this trend was reversed: refinancing loans were reduced, and reserve deposits began to shrink, as keeping them would impair the central bank ability to protect the euro in case of new risks of fiscal fragility of the Eurozone. This change of direction affected also interest rates: while deflation led to an unprecedented fall in the rates (close to zero for several years), later contraction led to a rapid increase.

The active stance of the ECB was praised for its success in protecting the euro, but also criticised, as it was difficult to justify it on the basis of the rules and mandate that it has according to the rules of the EU Treaties, which frame the ECB as the central bank of ‘a transnational entity that is not backed by an overarching state with a single fiscal policy’. Because of this peculiar nature, the money market of the EMU is inherently fragmented along national lines, and this creates an in-built risk for the euro as the single common European currency. Action by the ECB must take into account this structural feature in its decisions, differently from other central banks, such as the US Federal Reserve. In fact, financial stability is a particularly acute problem in the EU, because the transmission mechanisms for the interest rate are fragmented along national jurisdictions, and the ECB has to intervene in a different manner for each country. The neutrality mandated by the Treaties implies that the ECB must operate as a market-guaranteeing central bank, whose main task is to minimise national fragmentation.

Applying a heterodox monetary theory based on Marxist political economy, the authors analyse a wealth of data relating to the expansion and later the contraction of the ECB balance sheet. The results show that although the types of interventions that were taken during the crisis were those that were common among the main national central banks, in the case of the ECB the expansion of the balance sheet was not only due to the need to provide instruments in order to fight the financial crisis, but also to tackle the risks for the single currency, due to the fragmentation of the European money market.

This fragmentation has not been overcome, and therefore there is still a pressing need for the ECB to intervene in order to protect the euro. The structural problems of the Eurozone would require a new European monetary policy, but at the same time it is far from clear what structure and features this should have. As the authors write, ‘the transformation of both central banking and money markets has brought monetary policy to an impasse in Europe’, but there is currently no consensus on how to overcome it.

In EU Industrial Policy as Back-to-Front Industrial Policy, Damian Chalmers examines the emergence of industrial policy within the EU and its distinctive features. He argues that, after a period of uncertainty marked by a proliferation of goals without a clear capacity to reshape economic activities, EU industrial policy has recently moved to the forefront, influencing both EU and national programmes. Nevertheless, its distinctive origins continue to generate major difficulties, notably a limited integration of expert knowledge and an inclination to overcentralise authority in the Commission, both undermining its effectiveness. To address these shortcomings, Chalmers proposes an interinstitutional agreement designed to limit EU power, require ongoing evaluation of whether specific measures or processes should be maintained, and enhance institutional reflection and accountability. The article’s key strength lies in showing the extent to which industrial policy is a distinct mode of governance that demands an institutional culture largely foreign to the EU’s prevailing regulatory ethos. This perspective arguably explains more about the EU’s struggle to consolidate a genuine industrial policy than do traditional institutional explanations focused on legal bases or limited budgetary resources.

That said, Chalmers’ argument exhibits a certain tension, as it simultaneously downplays and overstates key dimensions of the EU’s industrial policy framework. On the one hand, his analysis appears to underestimate the extent to which a limited budget constrains the very centralisation of power he identifies as problematic. On the other, it attributes perhaps an excessive degree of confidence to the capacity of an interinstitutional agreement to secure both a more effective integration of expert knowledge and enhanced institutional accountability. Ultimately, if his analysis is correct, narrowing the EU’s competitive gap with its global counterparts cannot be achieved solely through the action of EU institutions. It will also require the active participation and mobilisation of national governments, whose more extensive experience in the field of industrial policy constitutes an indispensable resource.

This conclusion appears to resonate with the actual features of the EU’s return to activist government – or at least this is what Marco Dani suggests in EU-enabled State Activism: Equalizing or Asymmetric?. According to Dani, the revival of activist policies within the EU has occurred primarily at the national level, with the EU acting chiefly as an enabler. Yet, within the existing treaty framework, EU-enabled state activism can take either an equalising or an asymmetric form. In its equalising mode, the EU helps reduce fiscal disparities among member states, thereby fostering a more balanced use of fiscal and industrial policy tools across the single market. In its asymmetric mode, by contrast, such tools remain largely accessible only to states with significant fiscal space. Crucially, in Dani’s view, the choice between these modes is not the result of democratic deliberation or political judgement. Instead, it is shaped by Treaty constraints designed in an era of limited state intervention. Consequently, equalising EU-enabled activism tends to materialise only in times of crisis, when EU institutions manage to temporarily relax constitutional limits on national fiscal and industrial policy, deploy unconventional monetary measures, and forge the political consensus necessary for substantial fiscal initiatives. Outside such emergency contexts, only the asymmetric mode persists – a pattern of governance that threatens the integrity of the single market and undermines territorial cohesion. For Dani, therefore, only Treaty reform, accompanied by deeper political integration, could provide a stable foundation for state activism and enable the EU to fully fulfil its equalising potential.

3. Tentative answers

The contributions to this volume cover a wide range of topics, policy fields, and methodologies. Despite this diversity, several common themes and analytical threads emerge in their examination of the current wave of activism in the EU. Both divergences and convergences across the articles can be identified by engaging with the research questions outlined above.

A first point shared by all contributions to this Symposium is the claim that the shift towards activist government in the EU is likely to endure for the foreseeable future. To be sure, the analyses reveal the coexistence of a variety of instruments: some tailored to contingent circumstances or emergency situations, others endowed with a more structural and enduring character. Together, these emergency adjustments and more permanent mechanisms signal a transformation in the architecture, objectives, and modes of governance of the EU. Moreover, the scope and effects of these measures suggest that even ostensibly temporary responses are often underpinned by structural changes that persist – albeit sometimes in modified forms – beyond the emergency phase and become entrenched in the EU’s governance system. That said, the contributors diverge markedly in their assessments of these developments. In particular, differing views emerge on the constitutional implications of the turn to activism. While the current wave of EU activism across several domains clearly pulls towards greater centralisation – typically with a pivotal role for the Commission and the Council – it is increasingly evident that this very process is also generating resistance and fragmentation at the Member States’ level. Indeed, the heightened politicisation of decision-making at the EU level, combined with a growing polarisation of political life within the Member States, has intensified contestation over fundamental aspects of EU action, both internally and externally oriented. Yet, this same process is subject to contrasting evaluations. Whereas De Witte argues that activist government may strengthen the EU’s capacity for direct rule and thereby reinforce its trajectory towards state-building, Dani emphasises that such state activism remains deeply continuous with the Union’s demoicratic configuration. A similar divide emerges with respect to the desirability of the EU’s activist turn. While Saraceno and Cerniglia view this shift as broadly desirable, insofar as it enables the Union to address a range of economic challenges that the previous political economy paradigm struggled to tackle, others are more cautious, grounding their reservations in well-rehearsed concerns about government failure (Leino-Sandberg), or on concerns for its institutional repercussions (Chalmers).

Views also diverge in relation to the second research question, which concerns the degree of continuity or discontinuity between activist government and the Union’s previous neoliberal paradigm. While Bentley and McNamara claim that the security and geopolitical imperatives are becoming dominant drivers of EU policymaking – potentially to the point of displacing the neoliberal paradigm – others caution against too readily concluding that dirigisme has returned. In this regard, the analysis by Lapavitsas and Giordano of the ECB’s use of activist instruments offers a cautionary tale, showing how activism may also be deployed in a conservative manner to paper over structural weaknesses and ultimately to shore up, rather than transform, the neoliberal architecture.

A range of divergent perspectives also emerges regarding the compatibility of activist government with the existing Treaty framework. In this respect, there is broad agreement that the turn to activism has required creative interpretations of the Treaties. What varies, however, is the assessment of the soundness of these hermeneutic efforts and of their consequences. At one end of the spectrum, Leino-Sandberg is adamant in reiterating her long-standing criticism of the work of institutional lawyers and scholars who support an evolutionary interpretation of the Treaties. Beyond questioning the validity of such interpretations, she argues that the turn to activism has unfolded in a markedly elitist manner and lacks the democratic legitimacy that would accompany a formal Treaty revision. At the other end of the spectrum, Ioannidis shows how even the part of the EU economic constitution that has traditionally been framed in more purposive terms – the ECB’s mandate – may lend itself to interpretations that could, to a considerable extent, allow the ECB to accommodate EU activist economic policies. Between these two extremes, a number of intermediate positions can be identified. Acknowledging the fiscal constraints inherent in the Treaties, Cerniglia and Saraceno observe that the scope for implementing activist policies under the existing framework ultimately depends on a revision of the (new) Stability and Growth Pact, aimed at introducing a more robust ‘golden rule’. Dani contends that despite the efforts of well-meaning institutional lawyers, the Treaties impose institutional constraints that are likely to shape the quality of state activism pursued by the Union, favouring its asymmetric rather than equalising variety. Finally, Chalmers notes that the Union’s difficulties in developing a full-blown industrial policy stem less from the formal limits of the Treaties than from its inherited institutional culture.

In light of such divergent views on the nature of EU governmental activism, it is unsurprising that opinions also differ on the final question concerning the legitimacy of this shift in political economy. Two main divides emerge from the Symposium.

The first concerns the legitimacy of the shift itself, and is closely related to the preceding question of the compatibility of activist EU governance with the Treaties. Predictably, for those who consider activist policies to be difficult – if not outright impossible – to implement under the existing Treaty framework, EU interventionism appears either deficient in terms of legitimacy (Leino-Sandberg), or conducive to suboptimal policy outcomes (Dani). The opposing view is advanced by those (Ioannidis; Bentley and McNamara) who argue that, within the current Treaty framework, monetary policy or competition policy can legitimately be reshaped in pursuit of activist objectives.

A second divide concerns the modes of governance associated with the turn to state activism. In this respect, all contributions show that the policies affected by the activist turn exhibit an increasingly dense intertwining of political and technical dimensions. In responding to emerging challenges, the Union appears to favour executive-driven and technocratic modes of governance, even where the policy choices involved are highly salient. For De Witte, this results in an intensification of the democratic deficit, closely linked to ongoing processes of centralisation. For Dani, however, developments in the field of fiscal policy point to a more ambivalent outcome: while EU governance continues to display an excessively managerial and technocratic character, the emerging division of labour – under which Member States retain discretion over whether and how to pursue activist goals, with the EU acting as an enabler – may hold significant democratic promise.

The picture that emerges from the rich analysis of the contributions shows that the trend to activism of the EU has both structural and contingent elements: it will remain a fundamental feature in the future, but will take on aspects that are related to the evolving developments that will affect the Union, both endogenous and exogenous. Although it is impossible to foresee to what kinds of outcomes this will lead, we can expect that many of the elements that have been analysed in this volume will play a prominent role.