The European Union has long been understood as a polity that governs primarily through market integration and regulation rather than through public finance and redistribution.

While the Union has long possessed a budget and spending programme, both its capacity to raise resources and its spending powers remained limited and largely ancillary to its regulatory constitution.

In recent years, however, the Union has significantly expanded its ability to mobilize financial resources. The unprecedented use of common borrowing, debates over new own resources, and efforts to finance common European priorities have brought questions of revenue generation and financial capacity to the centre of European integration. At the same time, the Union has expanded the scope and ambition of its spending activities through instruments such as the Recovery and Resilience Facility, the Just Transition Fund, and strategic investments in digitalization, energy, and competitiveness. Together, these developments signal a broader transformation in the nature of the Union itself. The EU increasingly acts not only as a regulator but also as a polity that governs through the mobilization and allocation of financial resources.

The expansion of the Union's revenue-raising and spending capacities changes how integration is pursued. Questions of contribution and allocation—who pays, who receives, and under what conditions—are becoming central to the organization of political authority within the Union.

This conference explores the implications of this transformation.

• What kind of political community emerges when the raising and spending of money increasingly replaces regulation as mechanisms through which the Union exercises political authority?
• What forms of governance, solidarity, or political contestation are gained—and potentially lost—when money increasingly complements or replaces regulation as a mechanism of European integration?
• How does the growing use of financial incentives and conditionality constituted mechanisms through which relationships between the Union, Member States, and citizens are constituted and governed?

These questions acquire particular urgency at a moment when the Union is being asked to support the Ukraine, finance the green transition, prepare for enlargement, and strengthen Europe’s economic and geopolitical resilience—all challenges that require resources on a scale that challenges the EU’s traditional model of governance. Whether the EU can confront these challenges depends not on its regulatory capacity alone, but on its ability to mobilize and deploy financial resources. As a result, current negotiations over its next Multiannual Financial Framework and own resources are no longer merely technical debates about financing. They are increasingly contests over who belongs, what the Union stands for, and what kind of political community Europe seeks to become.