This paper examines whether periods of sharply increased legislative activity—so-called policy punctuations—produce significant policy outputs in the European Union’s (EU) multifaceted governance environment. While punctuated equilibrium theory (PET) posits that public policies evolve through long stretches of stability interrupted by sudden, intense bursts of reform, the substantive significance of the resulting legislation often remains under-explored.

To address this gap, the study draws on approximately 55,000 EU legislative documents and employs advanced NLP techniques and network analysis to measure legislative significance along two dimensions: innovation (the extent to which new laws depart from established policy frameworks) and impact (a law’s enduring influence within the legal network).

The findings challenge the assumption that punctuations in EU legislative output lead to significant policy change. While policy punctuations are modestly associated with increased impact — laws adopted during these periods tend to endure and shape subsequent policymaking—they do not reliably foster more innovative legislation. Instead of fundamentally rethinking policy frameworks, EU lawmakers frequently respond to urgent problem pressures by consolidating and extending established approaches, rather than crafting novel solutions.

These results refine our understanding of PET in the EU context by demonstrating that policy punctuations are less about radically redefining policy trajectories and more about strengthening and consolidating existing arrangements over time. They highlight the importance of assessing both innovation and impact to fully capture the significance of policy change. Ultimately, this study offers a more nuanced view of how dramatic shifts in legislative attention translate into substantive, long-term policy change within the EU.