Silent revolution/passive revolution: Europe's COVID-19 recovery plan and green deal

Abstract

Do the EU Recovery Plan and Green Deal (EGD) break with disciplinary neoliberalism? Eschewing binary ‘yes or no’ answers, this article draws on Gramsci's idea of passive revolution as ‘progressive restoration’ to analyse these important developments in the European political economy. It offers a balance sheet of ‘progressive’ and ‘restorative’ elements and argues that these cohere in an integral response to geopolitical pressure and legitimation problems by the ‘Piedmont of Europe’–Germany's power bloc. A concluding section argues that the most significant changes engendered by these initiatives may not reside in the substance in policy but rather in how policy is carried out–in the form. It seems that it is becoming increasingly difficult to depoliticize disciplinary neoliberal governance in Europe. Future research is needed on the nature and implications of this for theory and (progressive) practice.