Scholars have undertaken multiple efforts to attain a better understanding of unpolitics, studying the motivations and the methods of populist radical right (PRR) governments in undermining consensus-building in the European Union (EU). This paper turns the focus toward the consensus-oriented actors in the EU, the European Commission and the mainstream governments. While scholarship is pessimistic about the EU’s capacity to build consensus with PRR governments sitting at the table, the consensus-oriented actors still adopt institutional and political innovations. During the COVID-19 crisis, they secured the timely adoption of the EU’s Multiannual Financial Framework and the recovery fund against the opposition of Hungary and Poland, which threatened to block both fiscal measures over the rule-of-law conditionality. This paper aims to theorise and document the resilience of consensus-oriented actors in the EU against such attempts of unpolitics. It builds on the assumption that resilience reflects the capacity of actors in an institutional system to adapt to existential threats and maintain autonomy in decision-making processes. From there, the paper develops an analytical framework that allows the evaluation of the resilience of consensus-oriented actors in the EU against attempts of unpolitics by assessing the degree of adaptation and innovation in their reactions. The empirical analysis can uncover multiple innovations through which mainstream governments and the European Commission showed high resilience and successfully countered the disruptive actions of the Hungarian and Polish governments during the COVID-19 crisis. This paper makes a significant contribution to the academic debate, offering theoretical reflections and empirical insights about the capacity of consensus-oriented actors in the EU to withstand attempts of unpolitics.
