Leiden University Student Repository

Nagel, Ben (2024)

NextGenerationEU and the Hamiltonian Moment: About the purpose and weakness of a historical comparison

Bachelor thesis | International Studies (BA)

This thesis engages in the debate surrounding the EU's NextGenerationEU recovery fund: more than €800 billion to member states to help them through the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic. These funds are raised through common EU debt and some of them are provided in the form of grants. This combination led to discussions about the significance of the programme for European integration and the EU's possible evolution from an international organisation towards a federal state, specifically whether it bears similarity to the 'Hamiltonian moment,' a set of 18th-century fiscal reforms in the United States. The thesis compares NGEU and the Hamiltonian moment in terms of their respective context, content and consequences. It finds that the NGEU programme did not constitute Europe's very own Hamiltonian moment due to its very different and much less significant impact on the functioning of fiscal policy in its polity.

European Union

EU fiscal policy

Hamiltonian moment

NextGenerationEU

NGEU

fiscal federalism

Author

Nagel, Ben

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Specialisation

Europe

Supervisors

Hofmann, A.

ECTS Credits

15

Language

en