ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the policymaking process that led to the swift adoption of SURE (the temporary Support to mitigate Unemployment Risks in an Emergency) in spring 2020 to stem some of the gravest social consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. SURE is an instrument that boosts cross-EU solidarity: it involves risk sharing, thus giving rise to concerns about ‘moral hazard’, especially in fiscally conservative Member States. To understand how it was possible to contain its politically disruptive potential, we reconstruct the debate and the policy process behind its adoption by relying on secondary sources, EU documents, news coverage, and interviews with key participants and observers. We detect some instances and issues whereby the potential for conflict between Member States was high, and we highlight the factors explaining why this did not happen. These include the Commission’s strategic choice and design of the policy, which focused on support for national job-retention schemes at a time when the latter were being massively used by governments throughout Europe; the epistemic construction of the COVID-19 crisis as a symmetric and exogenous shock; and positioning SURE in a broader policy package as one of three safety nets.
