How Eurocrats Negotiate the Path From Crisis to Routine: Tracing the Micro‐Foundations of Routinisation After the Greek Crisis

Abstract Whilst institutional change following the eurozone crisis is well documented, the mechanisms underlying this change remain less understood. This article examines how EU officials negotiated the routinisation of the European Commission's Task Force for Greece into the Structural Reform Support Service, a technical assistance mechanism for all member states. Drawing on unprecedented access to internal Commission drafts and interviews with key actors, the analysis traces how this transformation emerged through internal contestation over the framing, instrumentation and legitimation of technical assistance – from the crisis management of the 2010s to new modes of EU governance. Using a practice‐based lens focused on the everyday work of drafting and negotiation, the analysis identifies two competing logics involved: an integrative logic centred on co‐ordination and ownership and an economising logic oriented towards macroeconomic surveillance and conditionality. Rather than reflecting strategic design or institutional self‐interest, routinisation is shown to be a negotiated and contingent process through which crisis experiences are interpreted and institutionalised. By examining the micro‐dynamics of time sequences and the practices of EU drafters, the article shows how learning from crisis is shaped by bureaucratic actors operating within politically charged institutional settings. It contributes to EU governance scholarship by revealing how routine emerges from struggles over interpreting, embedding or discarding lessons from the past.