Turning Crisis into Opportunity: The European Commission as a Purposeful Opportunist during the Eurozone Crisis

This paper focuses on the European Commission’s effort to expand its authority during the Eurozone crisis via the crisis-management measures that it proposed. The paper discusses whether the EC managed the emerging crisis in a way that favoured the expansion of its authority. It also poses inquiries regarding the directionality of the reform proposals, meaning why the Commission’s suggestions were based on an underlying economic logic of balanced budgets and export-led growth. By examining these questions the paper offers an analysis of how EC officials employ crisis incidents as policy windows via which they promote their organization’s empowerment and the consolidation of a certain economic agenda. The paper focuses on examining Commission’s proposals where causal linkages between the crisis and the suggested reforms are explicitly drawn. It draws material from grey literature sources, first and second-hand accounts and from a limited number of interviews. This study will offer insights vis-a-vis the Commission’s reaction mechanisms when it has to act under conditions of intense organizational insecurity without clear views on the optimal reform path. It will also make a contribution to the field of policy change by identifying how the Commission decides the directionality of its reform proposals during a crisis.