Agreeing on the European COVID-19 budget package – multiple streams in the European Union

The agreement in July 2020 on a new multiannual financial framework of the European Union and the additional recovery fund ‘Next Generation EU’ to mitigate the socio-economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic has been widely described as an outstanding turning point in European integration, as historic and even as a European ‘Hamilton moment’. How and why this far-reaching change was possible has been subject of academic debate ever since. One of the best-known approaches to analysing political change is John W. Kingdon’s Multiple Streams Framework (MSF). This approach, adapted to the particularities of the European political system, will be used here to analyse this comprehensive change. The approach and its structural elements – three streams, an opening policy window of opportunity for change, and a policy entrepreneur – help to analyse the different roles of political actors, their goals and interests, their interaction and the framing of this change.