The fiscal sovereignty of the European Union after the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine

ABSTRACT NextGenerationEU, the recovery programme adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic, did not provide the EU with fiscal sovereignty. Fiscal sovereignty remains under the control of the member states which are, however, constrained by the Stability and Growth Pact. Comparative federalism shows that central fiscal sovereignty requires granting the power to tax to the centre but without impairing the fiscal sovereignty of the units. The co-existence of two distinct, yet connected, fiscal sovereignties (EU and member states) would mean departing from the regulatory model of fiscal integration created with the Maastricht Treaty, and would thus require treaty change. Future research should perform a more thorough comparison between the EU and fiscally centralized and decentralized federations. Qualitative comparative analysis could complement process tracing and systematic content analysis to identify combinations of conditions that make the co-existence of fiscal sovereignties possible in consolidated federal polities – and still impossible in the EU. Books reviewed Paul Dermine (2022) The New Economic Governance of the Eurozone. A Rule of Law Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Federico Fabbrini (2022) EU Fiscal Capacity. Legal Integration After COVID-19 and the War in Ukraine. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brady Gordon (2022) The Constitutional Boundaries of European Fiscal Federalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tomasz P. Woźniakowski (2022) Fiscal Unions. Economic Integration in Europe and the United States. Oxford: Oxford University Press.