ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that climate and digital became meta-policies of the European Union (EU) under the von der Leyen Commission and the 2019–24 European Parliament, challenging the preeminence given to the single market by the Juncker Commission in its 2017 White Paper. These meta-policies expanded EU ambitions, and hence the scope of its policy agenda, across several dimensions. They aimed to protect Europeans from environmental and online harms, but also to transform toxic global systems, namely an economic model that failed to take account of climate externalities and a digital business model that failed to respect fundamental rights and European values. Both the protective and transformative agendas set under these policies involve extensive norm-setting within the EU, but also beyond it to set extra-territorial, global norms that take account of the broad public interest also in countries outside Europe. To deliver this normative agenda would require tighter policy coordination within the EU and greater use of EU law, making the scenario “doing much more together” plausible. During the COVID-19 crisis, the financial resources and political attention available for such broad ambitions were reduced, but the need to avoid future such crises will bring the climate and digital transitions back to the fore. For the future of European integration, the question is whether the EU can deliver on the high ambitions it has set for the climate and digital agendas, or whether they end up widening the capability–expectations gap.
