The dynamics of EU policymaking in the COVID-19 crisis

In the compound EU polity, the escalation potential of policy politicisation into polity politicisation is high. However, this very challenge induces key actors to focus their attention on the de-escalation of policy politicisation and polity maintenance. Based on quantitative and qualitative data documenting the public debate on EU policymaking and secondary literature, this study analyzes the dynamics of policy politicisation in the EU during the COVID-19 crisis. It traces the policy-specific dynamics in the domains of border closure, public health, economic and fiscal policy, and vaccination. The analysis shows that the member states mainly drove the escalation of politicisation and that a variety of de-escalation or polity maintenance mechanisms allowed policy-specific settlements, which prevented the spillover of policy politicisation to polity politicisation.