The crisis of long-termism: time and independence in the European Union

Unable to point to a popular mandate, unelected institutions must find another source of legitimacy. This article argues that, in the context of European integration, a solution was long sought in the notion of far-sighted rule. Independent institutions such as the European Commission, Court of Justice and European Central Bank consolidated their authority with claims that they were distinctively well-placed to pursue long-term goals, being insulated from the short-termism to which national democracies are supposedly prone. Having traced the emergence and the logic of these claims, the article examines the preconditions they rest on, and the extent to which these still hold. As we argue, in today’s context of volatility and emergency governance, these temporal claims look increasingly outdated, thereby disrupting one key rationale for the EU’s division of powers.