The Reforms of the Economic and Monetary Union During the Euro Crisis: The Ordoliberalisation of the European Economic Governance?

This article examines the role of ordoliberal ideas in the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) reforms adopted during the Euro crisis. Drawing on discursive institutionalism and morphological analysis, the study employs process-tracing and discourse analysis to reconstruct the reform process. The analysis primarily focuses on the public discourses of German leaders and the documents of the Van Rompuy Task Force. The article argues that ordoliberal ideas played a crucial role in the formation of the German government's preferences regarding the EMU reforms. Their impact was more limited in the reform process, where other actors were involved and Germany had to accept compromises. As a result, the reforms were more flexible than Germany would have preferred. However, to the extent that the reforms align with Germany's approach based on fiscal discipline and national responsibility, they reflect an ordoliberal rationality. In this sense, the reforms contributed to the incorporation and strengthening (albeit partial and incomplete) of the ordoliberal principles of fiscal discipline, national responsibility, competitiveness and Ordnungspolitik within the EMU rules during the crisis. These are the constitutive principles of competitive federalism, a model of European integration in which the role of supranational institutions is to enforce a regulatory framework that, by reducing their discretion in fiscal and monetary policy, exposes member states to market pressure and prompts them to adopt neoliberal policies to remain competitive with each other.