Europe's three pillars: towards a new strategic (im)balance 47 4. Crises that altered the balance: from plural integration to strategic centralisation The crises that have marked the last decade and a half have accelerated a process of institutional and financial centralisation in the European Union, altering the balance between its fundamental institutions. 4.1. Financail crisis (2008–20)1:3the triumph of technocratic governance The sovereign debt crisis profoundly transformed the economic architecture of the European Union. To prevent the collapse of the euro and restore confidence in the markets, Member States put forward a set of instruments that decisively strengthened central supervision. The creation of the European Semester introduced a permanent mechanism for monitoring national budgetary and structural policies, establishing a direct link between European economic governance and internal decision-making processes. At the same time, the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) provided the Union with significant lending capacity, although linked to strict conditionality, giving European creditors a decisive role in defining domestic reforms in the countries receiving assistance. The Fiscal Compact and the strengthening of fiscal rules further consolidated this logic, making permanent a framework of discipline and surveillance that went far beyond the institutional design envisaged in the original Treaties. This set of instruments clearly reinforced the vertex of the Europe of Sovereignties, but in a peculiar version through intensified intergovernmentalism that combined regulatory centralisation with political control exercised mainly by the strongest national governments. At this stage, the Union has evolved into what some authors describe as a true "regulatory State", characterised by extensive central supervisory power and reduced participation by both national parliaments and the European Parliament itself. Structural decisions on economic policies were no longer subject to broad democratic deliberation, but were now negotiated in restricted intergovernmental formats, marked by financial urgency and strong power asymmetries between States. 4.2. Brexit (2020): strengthening of the Franco-German axis and executive centralisation Brexit has had a profoundly ambivalent effect on the European institutional balance. On the one hand, it removed from the equation a Member State that had for decades acted as a natural counterweight to overly centralised integration, by defending the primacy of the internal market, competitive discipline and a liberal intergovernmentalism that limited the role of central institutions. The geometry of alliances within the Council changed immediately with the departure of the United Kingdom. On the other hand, Brexit triggered three far-reaching cumulative effects: it strengthened the Franco-German axis, which began to dominate the Union's strategic agenda more frequently; it promoted decision-making centralisation, consolidating the role of the European Council as the dominant political body; and it reinforced the vertex of the Europe of Law, through a more assertive Commission with greater political leeway to propose integrated solutions. In this regard, the role of Donald Tusk (2019 and 2022)5 as President of the Council, who was boldly assertive 5https://www.consilium.europa.eu/pt/press/press-releases/2019/11/13/keynote-speech-by-president-donal-tusk-at-the-opening-ceremony -of-the-20192020-academic-year-at-the-college-of-europe/; https://www.consilium.europa.eu/pt/press/press-releases/2019/01/22/ speech-by-President Donald Tusk at the signing ceremony of the Franco-German Treaty of Aachen/
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