No. 34 The future of the Common Agricultural Policy 48 ANALYSIS AND PROSPECTIVE STUDIES CULTIVAR even before the UK's exit, when he stated that this departure would risk disrupting the EU's internal balance, by shifting the centre of gravity to the Franco-German axis and generating "creative ideas, such as those that envisaged the formation of a restricted club", i.e. a two-speed Europe. Although the European Parliament played a visible and politically relevant role in the negotiation process, this prominence did not translate into a lasting increase in its structural influence. In the end, intergovernmentalism emerged stronger. European governance became more dependent on the dynamics between the large States and the Commission's ability to act as a centralising agent. 4.3. Pandemic (2020): the RRF6 and the emergenocfea central executive power The pandemic marked one of the most significant moments in European integration since Maastricht. Faced with a simultaneous health, economic and social crisis, the Union responded with an institutional innovation unprecedented in its history: This architecture led to the process being described as a ‘quasi-federal leap’, such was the unprecedented combination of common debt, largescale European investment and central executive capacity. Although the European Parliament formally gained an important role in the creation and political monitoring of the RRF, namely in monitoring its implementation and ensuring the democratic accountability of the Commission, its effective influence proved to be limited. The design of the Recovery and Resilience Plans (RRPs), the assessment of compliance with reforms and the decision on the release of funds were almost entirely under the Commission's control, reducing the Parliament to a secondary player in an eminently technocratic process. Several authors and experts recognised this advance as a "qualitative leap in integration", but there was also a growing perception that it simultaneously created a risk due to the "participation deficit" resulting from the transfer of strategic decisions to executive structures with little exposure to direct democratic scrutiny. The RRF showed that Europe is capable of the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF). For the first time, Europe has created an instrument with genuine common financial capacity, based on joint debt issuance, The RRF showed that Europe is capable of acting quickly and ambitiousyl, but it has also higlhighted the growign tension between executive efficiency and participatolreygitimacy. acting quickly and ambitiously, but it also highlighted the growing tension between executive efficiency and participatory legitimacy. This tension will continue to shape the Union's structuring choices in the post-2027 period. combined with a central executive power capable of guiding reforms and investments in Member States. The MRR was based on a deeply centralised logic of conditionality. Structural reforms became a criterion for access to disbursements; milestones and targets were defined, monitored and evaluated directly by the Commission, with financial implementation made conditional on the fulfilment of these targets. 4.4. Warin UkraineandUS-Chinacompetition: strategic centralisation and economic asymmetry The invasion of Ukraine (2022), the urgent need to ensure energy autonomy and the intensification of technological and industrial competition with the United States and China significantly accelerated the trend 6 The Recovery and Resilience Facility was the main instrument of the EU recovery plan to mitigate the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, and was implemented in Portugal through the Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR).
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