Against All Odds: A History of Resilience and Human Centred Recovery for the EU

The chapter by Edoardo Ales systematically investigates the actions endeavoured by the EU in order to cope with the odds that have plunged the first decades of the new millennium: natural disasters linked to climate change and human negligence, side effects of globalization, financial and sovereign debt crisis, pandemic and war. The EU has mobilized all the available legislative instruments and policies, even coming up with new ones, in the view of showing solidarity towards Member States, citizens and workers affected by those odds. Economic, social and territorial cohe sion (Articles 175 ff. TFEU); exceptional occurrences beyond Member States’ control (Article 122 TFEU); safeguard of the stability of the Euro area (Article 136(3) TFEU): those have been the grounds of EU action. However, support granted out of the EU budget has been gradually trans formed into loans at a favourable interest rate, made yet conditional upon structural social reforms, ending up in a mix of the two, linked as well to a strict conditionality. Furthermore, financial support from the EU budget has been understandably made conditional upon the respect of the rule of law, to be widely conceived in the framework of Article 2 TUE. More recently, EU resources have been earmarked to the military support of Ukraine, not only out of the Defense Headings of the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) but also by allowing Member States to request their reallocation from socially oriented funds. Such a possibility is likely to challenge the very meaning of human-centred resilience and recovery as defined by all the instruments at stake.