Under what conditions? How the narrative of EMU fiscal stability is reshaping Cohesion policy’s EU solidarity

Abstract

This research investigates the policy narratives that were deployed by the Commission to justify the reform of Cohesion policy in relation to the long-standing process of EMU reform. Our aim is to find out how narratives about EU solidarity allowed the creation of both redistributive patterns among the Member States, and Cohesion policy’s macroeconomic conditionality. We identified two narratives: one of EU solidarity, based on the ‘harmonious development’ of the territories, and one of EMU stability, consisting in cross-national solidarity in exchange for structural reforms. We argue that, in the context of EMU reform, the narrative of stability found a favourable interest constellation, becoming the ideational driver of the Cohesion policy reform. In order to prove this argument, we conducted an ideational process tracing on the 1988 and 1994 Cohesion policy reforms, as well as a frame analysis on a corpus of 74 speeches from relevant EU Commission policy actors.