Abstract

The Next Generation EU, the main response given by the EU to the 2020 pandemic crisis, is innovative from several points of view: on the one side, it marks a discontinuity with the austerity policies adopted by the EU in the 2008-2012 sovereign debt crisis, on the other side, after years of decisions taken through the tools offered by differentiated integration, it was decided by unanimity. Adopting the Actor-based institutionalism approach and building on a large collection of primary sources, the article reconstructs the negotiations that, between February and July 2020, led to the adoption of the NGEU, showing how the final agreement is largely the result of distributive negotiations in which all actors and coalitions have had to accept compromises, in some cases unthinkable until a few months earlier.