Gouvernement Économique, but Not Like in the 1990s: The Commission and the ECB's Policies Advancing the ‘Green Transition’
本文分析了2020年代欧盟经济和金融治理改革，指出欧盟委员会和欧洲央行通过新金融工具和协调方式推动绿色转型，形成了一种不同于1990年代的多中心经济治理模式。
Drawing on an integrated analysis of the latest European Union (EU) economic and financial governance reforms in the 2020s, we glean a new European economic governance paradigm. This article unpacks the main features of this new form of European gouvernement économique. The article focuses particularly on the set of policies adopted by two key actors in European economic and financial sector governance – the European Commission and the European Central Bank (ECB) – to advance the ‘green transition’ toward a carbon neutral EU economy by 2050. The new EU gouvernement économique aims to steer the Union towards a ‘net zero’ emissions economy by 2050, albeit important recent studies (European Court of Auditors 2023) have raised concerns that this ambition may not be realistic. It has larger financial means at its disposal considering the ‘traditional’ EU budget, combined with newly set-up supranational investment funds available through the NextGenerationEU (NGEU) programme. Moreover, it unfolds in a more complex polycentric system of EU economic governance (Ostrom 2010; Schmidt 2023; Vogler 2020; van Zeben and Bobic 2019) than envisioned in the older gouvernement économique blueprints of the 1990s. Faced with ‘wicked’ policy problems in this decentralized governance setting, such as the climate crisis, a global public health crisis and war at its doorstep, the EU institutions have to resolve the tension between multiple policy objectives, such as pursuing economic growth and ensuring low inflation. Table 1 provides an overview of the main distinctive features of the EU's ‘new’ gouvernement économique, focusing particularly on features that show a clear contrast in the 2020s, compared to the earlier blueprints from the 1990s. Financial instruments (EU level) Prevailing mode of governance Centralized, Commission in the lead. Decentralized, Commission as an orchestrator, together with other EU institutions, such as the ECB In short, this article argues that the European ‘green economy’ to support the green transition has superseded the older concept of gouvernement économique as an organizing principle of contemporary EU economic and financial sector governance. An integrated analysis of the recently adopted EU economic and financial sector governance policies and reforms as well as the (new) financial instruments launched in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic yields three important findings summarized below, which form the axes of this article. First, the European Commission has reinforced and expanded its leading role in steering European economic governance through a mission-oriented policy approach (Mazzucato 2018), especially considering its leading role in the European Green Deal (EGD). Its leadership was shown by issuing the NGEU ‘corona recovery’ bonds and by monitoring the implementation of the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) in the member states, now integrated in the European Semester. Second, now the Commission has substantial financial means which it can steer toward achieving the Union's long-term green transition. These expanded financial means become evident when we consider in an integrated way the traditional EU budgetary instruments in the multi-annual financial framework (MFF) 2021–2027, supplemented with the new EU investment mechanism NGEU to fund the green transition, foster the Union's economic recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic and the special financial assistance instrument European Stability Mechanism albeit outside the ‘regular’ EU decision-making framework. In fact, the EU is projected to become the fifth largest bond issuer by 2025, compared to the individual EU member states (European Commission 2023a). Third, the Commission works closely with the member states and with other EU institutions, such as the ECB, as an ‘orchestrator’ in the contemporary complex polycentric system of EU economic and financial sector governance. In contrast to earlier EU economic governance blueprints, the current approach does not seek further centralization and a hierarchical organization. Rather, it entails transferring more responsibility to and demanding more commitment from the member states in order to accommodate diverse national growth models, developmental trajectories and preferences (Ban and Helgadóttir 2022; Blyth et al. 2022; Hodson and Howarth 2023; Mertens et al. 2021). The Commission's interaction with the ECB is particularly important to unpack, as the ECB has taken a firm stance to support the transition to a carbon-neutral economy while, of course, staying within its policy remit of keeping prices stable and banks safe. Furthermore, inflationary pressures have become a challenge for citizens and businesses alike during 2021 and 2022. Rising inflation has negatively impacted citizens, while the rising interest rates to tame inflation have generated unintended consequences for bank balance sheets and, ultimately, for the stability of the European banking sector. These developments have prompted further actions by the ECB to reconcile the policy objectives of financial and economic stability, on the one hand, and price stability, on the other hand, especially in the aftermath of Covid-19 (Quaglia and Verdun 2023). The next sections elaborate on each of these three axes in turn. It is, of course, important to note that the concept of an EU gouvernement économique has a rather polarizing track record in European political economy. The earlier blueprints from the 1990s reflect heavily French economic thinking at the time, for example, former French Prime Minister Pierre Bérégovoy's proposals. These blueprints aimed for more coordinated fiscal and economic policies of the EU member states through the Stability and Growth Pact and the annual macro-economic policy evaluation cycles conducted by the Commission, which offered an unprecedented insight into national economic thinking and planning (see Howarth 2002 and Verdun 2000 for the role of French policymakers in this debate; Dyson 2002). However, critics of the concepts emphasized the contested adoption of the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, evoking connotations of supranational dirigisme, driven by a Commission detached from the member states' national economic priorities and concerns, even threatening to stifle vibrancy and innovation, thus potentially damaging the competitive edge of the ‘Northern core’ economies (Dyson 2002; Howarth and Verdun 2020). Since the early 2000s, the aptly named ‘post-functionalist’ turn (Hooghe and Marks 2009) has only given rise to a more polarized public opinion in the EU member states, greater Euroscepticism and more contestation regarding the place and the role of the EU in coordinating and guiding member states' national economic policies (Börzel 2016; Halikiopoulou 2018). Let us now take stock of the distinctive features of the recent EU economic and financial sector reforms to foster the green transition. To begin with, the European Commission has reinforced and expanded its leading role in steering European economic and financial sector governance, especially through leading the implementation of the EGD, issuing the NGEU corona recovery bonds and monitoring the implementation of the RRF, now integrated in the European Semester. It is notable that the Commission has opted not to work through hierarchical governance modes, such as centralization and maximum harmonization, which are increasingly seen as politically controversial, especially for the member states. To the contrary, in guiding the green economy transition, the Commission gives more space to the member states to choose their national economic policies in the RRFs, tailored to their own developmental priorities and objectives. The Commission has opted for a more accommodating approach in monitoring and guiding the implementation of the RRFs in the European Semester, perhaps reflecting criticisms of excessive dirigisme and top-down steering during earlier cycles, especially during the eurozone crisis (Schelkle 2017). Recognizing the threats posed by climate change and environmental degradation, the Commission led by Ursula von der Leyen launched the EGD in 2020, with the ambitious mission to make the EU ‘the first climate-neutral continent’ by 2050 (European Commission 2021). While this goal still echoes the so-called ‘Lisbon agenda’ to modernize the European economy and ensure its global competitiveness as well as social inclusion, the EGD displays the features of mission-oriented innovation policy (MOIP) approach (Mazzucato 2018). The EGD seeks to achieve no net emissions of greenhouse gases in the EU by 2050 and a shift toward a new economic growth model decoupled from resource use, inviting the active participation and contribution of the private sector and citizens (European Commission 2021). The Commission has explicitly relied on Mazzucato's (2018) ‘mission-oriented approach’ for the EU economy to navigate economic change in contemporary capitalism, considering the magnitude of the policy challenge to deliver on the EGD. According to this approach, coordinating public and private sector policies on a massive scale is necessary to radically change the mechanisms that govern the (economic) value distribution. New types of MOIP collaborations, especially public–private partnerships, are particularly important. This is visible in contemporary EU economic governance when we consider the ‘industrial policy’ component of the EGD. For example, the Commission (2021) has stressed that ‘the Green transition presents a major opportunity for European industry by creating markets for clean technologies and products’. It recognizes that the legislative and policy proposals implementing the EGD affect entire value chains in sectors, such as energy and transport, agriculture, construction and renovation, and have the potential for new, and more sustainable, job creation in the member states in these sectors through a more pro-active industrial policy. Especially since the mid-2010, there has been a clear rise and renewed attention given to EU industrial policy as well as greater integration of different industrial policy functions at the supranational EU level (Bulfone 2023; Di Carlo and Schmitz 2023). The interplay of functional, cultivated and political spillovers, driven especially by the Franco-German backing of more pro-EU industrial policy positions since 2016, explains the timing of the rise of this more ambitious and far-reaching EU industrial policy (Di Carlo and Schmitz 2023). Nevertheless, the nature of the policy area and related externalities explain why some areas, such as ‘clean’ energy production, have advanced faster than others (Di Carlo and Schmitz 2023; Prontera and Quitzow 2022). Second, now the Commission has substantial financial means, which it can mobilize to achieve the long-term green transition objectives of the Union. These expanded financial means become evident when considering in an integrated way the traditional EU budgetary instruments in the MFF 2021–2027 with the new EU investment mechanism NGEU to fund the green transition and foster the Union's economic recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic. The start of the implementation of NGEU in 2021 means that EU bonds are already here, even though both public opinion and key member states remain divided on the desirability (and viability) of common EU bonds as a ‘solidarity’ financial instrument to raise capital and pay up for common EU policy objectives. In fact, the Commission's (n.d.) recent rhetoric on debt issuance stresses that ‘it [the Commission] is a well-established name in debt securities markets, with a strong track record of successful bond issuances over the past 40 years’. Importantly, the recently adopted NGEU package marks a radical departure from previous EU economic and financial policy constrained by the ‘balanced budget’ rule at the EU level, with deficit spending precluded by the EU treaties. The Commission now has temporary powers to borrow from the international financial markets in order to finance NGEU and, consequently, implement the EGD (for more on the EGD, see Dyrhauge and Kurze 2023; Eckert 2021). In general, EU borrowing is executed using multiple instruments, including EU Bonds, EU Bills and NGEU Green Bonds (European Commission n.d.). There are precedents for joint EU borrowing with a very limited remit, for example, for Euratom, SURE (the EU's programme to finance short-term employment schemes across the EU and keep people in jobs during the Covid-19 pandemic) and the Macro-Financial Assistance+ programme for Ukraine, but NGEU Green Bonds scale up this borrowing considerably. In fact, the amount is such that the EU as an entity is projected to become the Union's fifth largest bond issuer by 2025, placed immediately after the four largest eurozone bond issuers, namely, France, Italy, Germany and Spain (European Commission 2023a). Furthermore, through issuing up to €250 billion of ‘green bonds’ as part of NGEU funding plans, the Commission will become the largest issuer of green bonds globally (European Commission 2023a). This significant development regarding the EU as a borrower further substantiates Braun and Gabor's (2020) findings about the growing ‘infrastructural entanglement’ of the EU (economic) institutions in financialization. Whereas Braun and Gabor (2020) unpacked how the ECB has ‘advocated and actively promoted, for monetary policy purposes, the development of shadow banking and shadow money’, this article extends their argument, showing that, furthermore, the Commission plays a leading role as an issuer of green bonds on behalf of the EU, deepening the EU's infrastructural entanglement with global financial markets. The financial backing to implement the EGD intersects in important ways with the EU's Covid-19 recovery fund, NGEU. At least one third of the investments from the NGEU financial package and the EU's 7-year budget (the MFF 2021–2027) have been pledged for financing the EGD (European Commission 2021). Loans from the European Investment Bank will also be mobilized. Taken together, the MFF 2021–2027 and NGEU have raised a total €2.018 trillion to implement the EU's policy priorities over the next 7 years, which is an unprecedented financial resource available at the EU level. The EU's regular long-term budget, the MFF, accounts for €1.210 trillion of the total amount and NGEU accounts for €806.9 million to supplement the regular EU budget. Furthermore, NGEU funding has been earmarked to top up the following MFF budgetary headings (in order of magnitude of the contribution): ‘Cohesion, Resilience and Values’ – €426.7 million (+ €776.5 from NGEU); ‘Natural Resources and Environment’ – €401 million (+ 18.9 from NGEU); and ‘Single Market, Innovation and Digital’ – €149.5 (+ €11.5 from NGEU). Third, the Commission now works closely with the member states and with other EU institutions, such as the ECB and EU agencies as an orchestrator in the contemporary complex polycentric system of EU economic governance. The orchestration analytical framework (Abbott et al. 2020) helps understand the new role of the Commission and the ECB in the EU's contemporary more complex system of polycentric economic governance. Orchestration is a form of indirect governance. The orchestrator works through the intermediary to influence the governance target, and it is ‘soft’ because the orchestrator often lacks authoritative control over the intermediaries and the targets in a classical principal-agent delegation sense (Abbott et al. 2020, p. 21). An orchestration approach may be desirable in contemporary EU economic governance to mitigate the effects of growing public opinion polarization and Euroscepticism, as the Commission relinquishes direct ‘control’ and seeks instead to co-create the national economic programmes together with the member state governments, allowing much more space for national discretion and national economic priorities. 1 On the one hand, the contemporary EU economic governance system is complex, polycentric and more decentralized simply because there are more relevant venues of policy-making in the multi-level EU governance system, considering also the EU's embeddedness in global governance (see also Schmidt 2023). On the other hand, complexity and polycentricity are magnified by the types of contemporary economic policy problems that the EU faces. These tend to be wicked policy problems, such as the climate crisis, that have multiple interconnected dimensions, and the solutions of one may the of solutions to policy and The Commission's interaction with the ECB is particularly important to unpack, as the ECB has taken a firm stance to support the transition to a carbon-neutral while of staying within its policy remit of keeping prices stable and banks 2022). On the one hand, inflationary pressures a challenge for citizens and businesses alike in the of 2022. On the other hand, rising bank interest rates to in inflation generated unintended consequences for balance sheets and, ultimately, for the stability of the European banking sector. Let us the tension between the economic growth policy and the low inflation policy especially from the of the Commission and the of the Union's economic and financial policies in that the Commission is more on economic especially in the implementation of the member states' green transition At a EU emphasized that the EU economy strong and growth between and and in after the Covid-19 pandemic. also stressed that ‘the fiscal stance of the past three years, with the monetary was to support the area economy we be of these and the economy’ (European Commission This is why the Commission's as part of the European the for a more fiscal but ‘the investments that are for common (European Commission the ECB has been with the of the economic growth policy and the low inflation The tension between these two policy objectives visible when we consider some of the key of the ECB during 2021 and 2022. Since the of the the ECB and the ECB have been very clear that the policy is to keep eurozone inflation below, but it was seen as a departure from the when the ECB in after a of its monetary policy that ‘it inflation the of the 2021). The ECB also it direct more its bonds to mitigate climate change p. thus globally as one of the main of bank climate in a global banking (see also 2023; 2022). For example, the ECB into climate change when one of the main to borrowing and economic as part of its economic the ECB (2021) that it that have to their carbon At the time, it is that the ECB the main decision-making has not been on how to a balance between the different policy objectives of the of the ECB are in of the new monetary and For example, of the Central has been a of ECB climate and a when the different policy objectives, such as keeping inflation in while financial stability and economic growth in the Union Bank 2023). of the Bank of France, has and member of the ECB has stressed that ‘the main banks their attention to climate change is the it will affect their to achieve their 2021). of the ECB have been more For of the between and 2021 and a member of the ECB for the ECB to its spending eurozone inflation of control and 2021). also that climate change and climate outside the remit of in three as was set to that in the in the ECB monetary policy to inflation and even the ECB policy to financial stability and the during the eurozone crisis and 2021). as inflation in the in in the ECB to from the economic growth policy to the low inflation In the raised the key ECB interest rates for the first in more than a to an to an of policy rates the ECB its interest in the eurozone interest since the global financial The ECB has to monetary policy since interest rates and its at an unprecedented to inflation towards the These actions the eurozone inflation to in but still in the ECB the so-called a to support the of monetary policy. to by the ECB the can be for of securities by eurozone member states that in financing not by to to the it is important to note that on the of the monetary policy and the amount of the is not the ECB a of discretion in the scale of the ECB a renewed on eurozone inflation in a in in 2022. that some EU such as the three states, unprecedented inflation rates to the of for example, war in Ukraine, energy chains and of that banks have to on their to their to ensure price stability will have to raise rates to that will deliver inflation in the ECB also to the low inflation policy by a to the bond and stressed that fiscal support for the eurozone economies be and This article stock of the recent policies adopted in the by two key actors in European economic and financial sector governance – the European Commission and the ECB – to advance the green transition toward a carbon neutral EU economy by 2050. that the new EU gouvernement économique of the can into larger financial means to support the green the traditional EU budget with newly set-up supranational investment funds available through NGEU. the mode of governance is polycentric and the Commission and the ECB as to the policies and actions of the member states and other EU and reconcile different policy objectives, such as economic growth and low inflation. At a on the of climate Pierre of the Bank of emphasized that climate policy an part of economic it is to public 2023). the of the Commission and the ambitious policies to advance the green transition will on in national economic policy and backing by the EU the and and the in the on of in at the of and the for their and on an earlier of this article. also to the in on of European for the and with concepts in European economic governance that we often take for