COMPARING THE MARSHALL PLAN AND THE EUROPEAN NEXT GENERATION UE. Models and Legal Tools of International and Supernational Cooperation to Promote Economic Development

The article analyzes and compares the European Recovery Plan of 1948, commonly known as the Marshall Plan, for the reconstruction of Europe after the Second World War (paragraphs 2, 2.1, 2.2), and the Next Generation EU (paragraphs 3, 3.1) through the lens and methods of legal comparison and historical analysis. As the description of the law cannot ignore the historicization of the object of study, such comparison is carried out inductively, through the analysis of the legal mechanisms in their concrete attitudes and the construction of descriptive schemes of facts, having regard to the legal discipline, but also to the functional profiles and the context in which the rules are conceived. Therefore, the author attempts to frame the two different models of international development cooperation by examining their forms and contents, as well as their methodological approaches and governance tools. This essay also takes a critical look at the system of controls called “vincoli esterni”, which can be translated as external constraints or conditionalities. These controls are particularly relevant as long as aid, grants and loans are conditional on plans for structural reforms of the legal system (paragraphs 4, 4.1). The conclusive remarks point out how this system of conditionalities – which for the state takes the form of a debt to give or not to give, to do or not to do – can lead to forms of subordination and structural homologation of the member states. It affects sovereignty, the way how powers and competences are exercised, policy strategies and the relationship between the “lender” and the “borrower” are conceived and practiced in concrete.