Condivisione del debito e state-building in stato di emergenza: riflessione sul Next Generation EU alla luce delle origini dell’esperimento federale statunitense

In the context of the Covid-19 emergency, the establishment of a Recovery Fund of 750 billion euro - proposed by the European Commission and approved by the European Council in the summer of 2020 - has prompted many scholars and columnists to speak of a European ‘Hamiltonian moment’. This expression refers to the origins of the US political-institutional system and, in particular, to the political insight of the first Federal Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, to build respectively a national debt and banking system, coupled by a national tax system, in order give credibility to the federal project. This brief essay reflects on the main stages of the negotiation that led to the European adoption of the Recovery Fund in the light of the American experiment. The goal is not to identify a perfect analogy between the American Hamiltonian moment and the European debt issue – a risky comparison – rather to use the historical-institutional perspective to relativize this European novelty and its consequences on the inter-state relationships on one hand, as well as between each member states and the Union on the other.