Since its inception the COVID-19 crisis revealed that EU countries ’ immediate
responses did not follow a clear path. Th ere is however growing evidence that tax
measures naturally converged and this chapter hypothesises that this was a downstream
eff ect of a common political framework of ‘ COVID-19 exceptionalism ’ based
on biopolitics, a convergence that defi es the initial expectations of fragmented reactions
to the emergency but which also poses critical challenges. Section I sets the stage of the
evolutionary analysis and indicates that the COVID-19 crisis led to a convergence of
tax policies. Sections II and III briefl y describe the concept of ‘ biopolitics ’ and ‘ state of
exception ’ as they emerged in seminal contributions mainly by Foucault and Agamben
and show how these concepts can be understood in a novel fashion to explain convergence
of tax policies in the context of the COVID-19 emergency. Section IV concludes
showing that COVID-19 biopower, biopolitics and exceptionalism also constituted the
institutional cause for the sudden adoption of the Next Generation EU, a measure that
directly implies investments but which has the essential mark of being a fi scal turning
point.