Building a European care regime: EU governance of national care provision through the European Semester

The EU Response to COVID-19: From Reactive Policies to Strategic Decision-Making.

This paper discusses the workings of the European Semester (ES) in relation to the policy field of education. My study shows how the ES enables the steering of education policy through encouraging specific economic and employment-related actions by European Union (EU) member states. With a focus on the relationship between the EU institutions and member states, this paper examines how the ES discursively promotes certain approaches to education through country-specific recommendations (CSRs). In this study, CSRs are revealed as policy spaces where European and national interests are brought together, enabling shared problem definition and collective learning. The paper illustrates how policy moves through translation and negotiation in the construction of CSR. The evidence drawn on here comes from analysis of CSRs in 2011–2016 and 15 semi-structured interviews with key policy actors, mainly from the European Commission, Council and Parliament. This paper concludes that CSRs work through soft power to manage governing tensions through translation and by building convergence and consensus. The analysis is framed theoretically by research on governing and knowledge and draws on a social constructivist perspective on policy work.

Editorial: Governing the EU's climate and energy transition through the 2030 Framework

Disharmonization in the Regulation of Transgenic Plants in Europe

European integration is largely seen as a process that has delivered stability and peace, as well as the economic prosperity of the Member States of the European Union (EU). It has helped to raise standards of living and build an internal market. But, there are more and more arguments that the EU decision-making system is not effective and the governance model is obsolete. Some are pointing out increasingly rising divergence on crucial EU policy matters. Others are arguing that the EU has been confronted with the challenge of heterogeneity, stressing the issue of immigration as the one of the most contentious policy matters currently facing the EU. Besides those controversial issues inside EU and different positions among member states there is Brexit. The paper analyses in particular the issue of EU economic governance and one of its main pillars – the European Semester. The Country Specific Recommendations, as the integral part of the economic governance model are presented in a view of the new framework envisaged to tighten budgetary coordination and keep the deficit and debt levels in accordance to the EU rules.

In recent years increasing pressure to limit the powers of the Czech public health authorities in the field of food safety has been noticed. An approach to safe food production and official controls depends on diverse and complex socioeconomic factors in the context of political and legislative framework within which food producers and official controllers exist. Official controls are those activities carried out by the competent authorities (CA) or delegated bodies) in Member States to verify business compliance with the requirements set out in agri-food chain legislation. The presented text compares the effectiveness of national food safety systems in the Member States (MS) of the European Union (EU). Under the current EU legislation, each MS shall appoint the competent authorities responsible for the purposes of European legislation in the field of food safety and for performance of official controls. Member States shall ensure that official controls are carried out regularly, on a risk basis and with appropriate frequency to achieve the objectives set out in the European legislation. For evaluation were used the country profiles of Member States, as published in 2011-2015. From the perspective of the European Commission current system of official controls in the Czech Republic is rated as one of the most effective and least problematic. When comparing various systems in Member States it is not possible to decide which control system is more efficient, i.e. system based on one competent authority or relying on several competent authorities.

The economic and financial crisis 2007/08 revealed profound weaknesses of the economic and financial governance framework of the European Union (EU), amongst them the insufficient coordination of EU policies in the field of economic policy. In 2011, EU member states created the European Semester which aimed at better coordinating member states' economic and fiscal policies. Focussing on French value-added tax (VAT) and environmental taxation policy between June 2011 and February 2015, I analyse under which conditions the European Semester process leads to changes in national taxation policies. I develop a theoretical framework that draws on rationalist Europeanization theory to argue that usage of European Semester impulses by domestic pro-reform actors is the central mediating variable to explain whether European Semester impulses lead to changes in national policies. The analysis reveals that despite similar European Semester impulses the degree of subsequent changes in French taxation policies varied significantly. Whereas environmental taxation policy was transformed substantially, VAT policy was only slightly modified. The different strength of domestic usage by French pro-reform actors provides an explanation for this variance: While in environmental taxation policy, a group of pro-reform actors actively used the European Semester impulses to push for substantial reforms, pro-reform actors did not make use of the European Semester impulses in the field of VAT policy.

The paper aims to identify and analyse potential legal avenues for phasing out fossil fuel subsidies (FFS) in the European Union (EU) using State aid rules. Our analysis reveals that the EU State aid rules would allow the European Commission to effectively target and monitor a vast number of FFS. From a policy perspective, the requirements for notification, examination, transparency, reporting, and recovery of unlawfully granted aid are of particular importance. The legal framework also provides avenues for the EU Commission to start a ‘Fossil Fuel Inquiry’, while providing important tools for civil society to apply pressure on states for the removal of FFS. Based on our legal analysis and pertinent literature, we discuss which of these different FFS and corresponding estimates are likely (or not) to fall under the EU State aid rules. Despite inherent uncertainties, the EU State aid toolbox offers various possibilities to the EU to actively advance its climate change policy and comply with its international commitments to reduce FFS. Key policy insights Member States in the EU still subsidize both the consumption and production of fossil fuels by a myriad of different measures, despite pledges to reduce FFS as part of the EU’s ambitious climate policy. A major part of these fossil fuels subsidies could be addressed by the already existing EU State aid rules, which provide an effective system that is not dependent on Member States political will and has a powerful enforcement mechanism. A first key step would be for the EU Commission to start a ‘Fossil Fuel Inquiry’, which would identify and quantify all support for fossil fuels within Member States. The EU State aid rules could also provide civil society with the possibility to actively lobby for State aid control, while offering the court systems in Member States as an additional avenue for enforcement.With this in mind, the EU State Aid rules could be used effectively to help the EU to phase out a major part of FFS.

In 2010 the European Semester was created to better coordinate fiscal and economic policies within Europe’s Economic and Monetary Union. The Semester aims to tackle economic imbalances by giving European Union (EU) member states country-specific recommendations (CSRs) regarding their public budgets as well as their wider economic and social policies with a view to enabling better policy coordination among Euro Area member states. In this article we develop a method to assess the way in which the CSRs have been addressing coordination and offer a systematic analysis of the way they have been formulated. We offer a way to code CSRs as well as one to analyse progress evaluations. Furthermore, we seek to use our results to address one of the reoccurring questions in the literature: whether the EU is pursuing a ‘one size fits all’ approach to economic policy making in the Euro Area? The findings indicate that different types of market economies and welfare states – different ‘varieties of capitalism’ – among the Euro Area members obtain different recommendations regarding different policy areas

The outbreak of the financial and economic crisis in 2008 had a severe impact on the member states of the European Union. Countries like Greece had to ask the Troika (the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund) for financial aid. In return, they were obliged to reduce public spending and, as a result, national social security systems were drastically reformed. Furthermore, the EU has exercised its competences to supervise national budgets more extensively, even for countries not applying for financial aid through the Country Specific Recommendations under the European Semester. Like the decisions providing financial support, these recommendations also touch upon member states' social security systems. Moreover, the actions of the EU seem to generate a tension between the social rights provisions in (inter)national human rights instruments and the EU economic monitoring process, hence creating a possible deficit at the level of the EU. The five collective complaints against Greece under the framework of the European Social Charter (Council of Europe) illustrate this tension. This Article investigates this tension further and provides insights in possible ways to close the gap between (inter)national social rights provisions and the EU economic monitoring process by looking at the right to social security in the EU legal order. In doing so, this Article scrutinizes the judicial safeguards available at EU level, namely the right to social security in the Charter of Fundamental Rights (CFEU) and the role of general principles of Union's law for the protection of fundamental rights. It will become clear that a lot of uncertainty still remains regarding the content and scope of the right to social security in the CFEU, as well as the enforceability of this provision in the EU economic monitoring process.

Managing the euro crisis has been a process of institutional transformation for the EU. The European Semester has emerged as a powerful tool for economic policy coordination between the Member States. Beyond the new enforcement tools that the Semester affords the Commission and Council in case of non-compliance with country-specific recommendations, the management of the crisis has given the Commission experience in structural reforms. The Commission now regularly uses this experience in formulating its yearly country-specific recommendations to Member States. Far from a stalwart of untethered neoliberalism, the Commission has been fashioning itself as the manager with a human face, the institution that understands both the structural reform requirements for a global economy, and the special need for strong social institutions that could shield European citizens from the worst of the shocks provoked by globalized markets. Hence the name, “Structural Reforms 2.0,” per the Juncker Commission. In this chapter, I review the Commission’s emerging structural reform “know-how,” as represented in its latest reflection papers and European Semester documents. The European Commission seems to have drawn from its experience in managing loan conditionality for debtor countries like Greece, Portugal, and Ireland, in order to come up with the set of structural reforms that it considers necessary for any country to thrive within the context of the euro. At the same time, it has taken on board the critiques of structural reforms that point to the potentially negative short-term effects of structural adjustment. Thus, the Commission seems to have fully embraced the idea of the EU as a soft alternative to unfettered globalization and has taken it upon itself to monitor certain aspects of the welfare state in Member States. The Commission’s recommendations, however, while presented in the mode of technocratic expertise, entail deeply political choices in almost every imaginable regulatory field. Despite constant assurances that there is no “one-size fits all” model for structural reforms, what is shaping up through the European Semester is effectively a list of desirable reforms—a set menu of options—which the Commission now openly characterizes as “EU best practices.” If applied, they would provoke deep restructurings and adjustments of national political economies with winners and losers to boot. These demands for deep restructurings are couched in a language of technical adjustment and fine-tuning that does not do justice to the qualitative reform required of the Member States nor to the substantive trade-offs between market efficiency and social fairness that only a democratic process can legitimize. Contrary to some observers, I conclude that the inclusion of social policy goals into the European Semester can be an indication of both the success of socially minded actors in influencing the content of macroeconomic governance, and of the success of market-minded actors in adapting to demands for “social fairness” in macroeconomic governance without ceding much space in terms of the kinds of reforms required. Much of this “socialization” of the European Semester will depend on how the rest of the management of the common currency evolves.

Battered by Geopolitical Winds, Bulgaria Struggles to Restart Much Needed Reforms

THE FUTURE OF THE COMMON SECURITY DEFENCE POLICY AND A CONSTITUTIONAL QUESTION

Background The European Semester (ES) is a policy coordination and scrutiny framework at EU-level for surveillance of fiscal and macro-economic policies in Member States. Health systems have not evaded that scrutiny. The analysis focusses on how health systems reforms are being endorsed in Country Specific Recommendations (CSRs) and how the ES process links to planning and implementation of national health system reforms over the period 2015-2018. Methods A descriptive content analysis of CSRs with a search for the keywords and phrases ‘health’, OR ‘healthcare’, OR ‘long-term care’ was performed for the years 2015-2018. Furthermore, CSRs addressing health systems were classified according to whether they were targeting access, quality or sustainability; and categorized regarding organisation and governance, financing, physical and human resources, and provision of services. Finally, implementation progress on the health CSRs was rated according to EC’s own evaluation scheme derived from the preceding year’s country report. Results CSRs with health system recommendations have featured continuously in the ES process each year and have stabilised in number. The themes of health CSRs are still dominated by financial sustainability, cost-effectiveness and of financing, although other health system goals and domains, particularly access, are increasingly addressed. There is a high degree of consistency on the content of health CSRs over the years for each country addressed. Progress with implementation of health CSRs is disappointing so far, based on the EC evaluations. No clear link between discontinuation of health CSRs and evidence of progress in implementing the CSR can be discerned. Conclusions The results uncovered some of the links between national and European institutions leveraging the ES to push health system reforms. However, a more balanced and long-term view is needed for the ES to contribute solidly to complementing national efforts in a complex reform context. Key messages Health CSRs are still dominated by financial sustainability considerations while other health system goals and domains are increasingly addressed. Progress with implementation of health CSRs is disappointing so far, although a longer-term perspective is needed to pay tribute to the complex reform environment of health system reforms.

ABSTRACTThe ‘European Semester’, a new framework for policy co-ordination across European Union (EU) member states, represents a major step in EU governance. Created in 2010 in the wake of the financial and sovereign debt crises and revamped in 2015, it was intended to provide a new socioeconomic governance architecture to co-ordinate national policies without transferring full sovereignty to the EU level. This introduction offers a brief overview and assessment of the European Semester, examining its implications along three critical axes, running respectively between the economic and the social, the supranational and the intergovernmental, and the technocratic and democratic poles of EU governance. We introduce and briefly summarize the seven other contributions that make up this collection. Our conclusions are that the European Semester challenges established theoretical understandings of EU governance, as it is a prime example of the complexity that supersedes simple polar oppositions.