I hold a PhD in political and social sciences from the Free University of Brussels and the University of Strasbourg. My doctoral thesis in political sociology focused on the European management of the Greek crisis. More specifically, I looked at the staff sent to Greece by the European Commission for technical assistance missions, i.e. to supervise the implementation of the reforms required of the Greek government in exchange for European financial aid (following a principle of ‘conditionality’). These were mainly European civil servants and seconded national experts, who sometimes called on other actors, such as consultants and members of international organisations.

Then, as a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute (EUI), I became interested in how technical assistance mechanisms were extended to all Member States, beyond Greece, Cyprus and Portugal. In this respect, the crises of the 2010s were a turning point. In this postdoctoral project, I looked at the creation of a new service within the European Commission, now called SG REFORM.

The technical assistance professionals I studied in my thesis were able to use the Greek crisis as a key argument: in their view, Greece was not such a special case. For them, the ‘pathologies’ observed in this specific case could also be found elsewhere, in Italy, France or Belgium. These positions contrasted sharply with the moralising discourse and essentialist caricatures of Greek (‘ouzo drinkers’) or Mediterranean (‘farniente’) culture that were very much in vogue in political and media discourse in the 2010s.

The observation of ‘ordinary’ shortcomings in the reforms carried out by Member States was accompanied by another argument, concerning the limits of the accession procedures. Once a country had joined the Union, European support for reforms came to an end. However, according to European reformers, joining the club should not mean the end of this support. From this perspective, Member State status no longer appears to be a simple label that, once obtained, is no longer questioned, but rather a status that must be regularly re-earned.

Some Member States themselves supported this approach. An alliance was thus formed between actors within the European Commission and representatives of several Member States, particularly in Eastern Europe, such as Romania and Croatia.

The Greek crisis revealed the limitations of crisis management orchestrated at European level: interventions were strongly criticised for being top-down and even coercive, often with little regard for their suitability to the national context, adopting a “one-size-fits-all” approach, sometimes even without concern for their constitutionality. In its management of the crisis, the European Union was severely criticised for setting aside some of its fundamental principles, such as equality between Member States, the primacy of politics over administration, and respect for the Charter of Fundamental Rights.

These judgements, initially made by external critics – typically NGOs – and then taken up by MEPs, have been internalised within the Commission itself, as I discovered when studying the creation of the Structural Reform Support Service, now known as SG REFORM. The texts (drafts, memos, etc.) that led to the creation of this service reflect these debates. They are also reflected in some of the main principles that now govern technical assistance to Member States: constraints seem to have given way to on-demand and co-construction with the reformed state.

At the same time – and this is a typical Eurocracy compromise – the former head of the 'troika' mission in Cyprus was placed at the head of this service, an emblematic figure of crisis management. He brought with him a number of his colleagues from DG ECFIN, the Commission's Directorate-General for Economic and Financial Affairs, which had been at the heart of crisis management. Although this new service was not formally attached to DG ECFIN, it nevertheless perpetuates a close link between structural reforms and economic objectives.

In a recently published article (accompanied by a blog post), I trace and explain the debates that took place within the Commission around two competing approaches before this compromise was reached.

Having studied the key players in the Greek crisis management and the changes this brought about within the Commission, I am now interested in how the EUintervenes in Member States' reforms through the SG REFORM mechanisms. One particular area of public policy that I am focusing on is the reform of central government administrations.

In the EU, this highly symbolic area, linked to the Member States' political histories, is governed by the principle of autonomy. Therefore, it is considered neither possible nor desirable whether in terms of interministerial coordination, civil service career management, the recruitment of high-ranking civil servants, and so on.

However, this sector has become more Europeanised in recent years. This has been the case in Greece, in a vertical manner. Conditionality was strict, in the sense that the reforms to be carried out in exchange for financial aid were very detailed and non-negotiable. Today, while technical assistance concerns all Member States, it takes different forms, particularly more flexible ones: it may involve recommendations, exchanges of ‘good practices’ within the framework of broader and more flexible conditions negotiated between the Commission and the Member States. This is what some people call coordinative conditionality, particularly in the case of post-Covid recovery plans. Despite their different forms, these interventions have given rise to a whole sphere of expertise to support them, ranging from the formulation of public policy measures to their implementation.

In my new project, I am returning to political sociology to first map out the actors within this world of expertise. Consultants, development agencies, national civil servants, European civil servants, international organisations and academics are involved to varying degrees in assisting with administrative reforms. The question is: to what extent.

For example, do large consulting firms have a stranglehold on the market? Or is the market dominated by certain states, which intervene in other Member States through their civil servants and development agencies? To answer these questions, I am currently using European financial transparency data to identify the actors that have won technical assistance contracts since 2016.

In the second part of the project, I will continue the investigation by focusing on a particular type of actor: national development agencies. Being based in Paris, I will focus on France to identify the reasons, types and stages of Expertise France's investment in the European field. As well as the financial aspect, there are also political and symbolic issues at stake. Winning contracts in this field means promoting oneself as a ‘model’ of public action abroad and nurturing transnational networks of expertise.

This status provides me with dual affiliation to the EUI and Sciences Po, which is invaluable to my project.

The School of Transnational Governance, to which I am affiliated at the EUI, not only offers a stimulating research environment on transnational expertise and administrative reforms, but also provides the opportunity to regularly exchange ideas with professionals, some of whom are involved in the technical assistance projects I am studying. 

As for Sciences Po and the CEE, their members are rooted in French research while maintaining a strong international outlook. This is the balance I was looking for after a career abroad, in order to reconnect with the field of political sociology. Furthermore, I find myself completely at home in the intersection between the state and public policy approach and the political economy approach, two of the CEE's key themes.

I had already spent some time at Sciences Po as a visiting researcher through the AxPo programme in spring 2024. During this time, I presented my project at a CEE seminar. This exchange was one of the most stimulating of my career — both the question-and-answer session during the seminar and the subsequent discussions with some of the attendees. I was eager to experience this intellectual stimulation and joy of research again.