Abstract
This paper examines the contemporary history of a key political category, that of " public ", in the context of the European Union. One of the singularities of the European integration project, historically centered on the construction of a large Single Market, is that it was forged without a strong notion of " public ". Thus, the sciences of European government that have developed since the 1960s, from theories of competition to those of governance, have one thing in common: they propose overcoming the boundary between " public " and " private ". However, in the face of the economic, ecological and pandemic crises that now follow on from one another and are intertwined, the words " public " are making a comeback in European politics through demands for " public " investments, but also for common debts, deficits and budgets. This paper proposes to analyze these new mobilizations, which are shaping the contours of a " Europe of public goods ", by situating them in a history of legal and political knowledge of European integration.
