Concluding remarks: New method or just cheap talk?

Abstract

Some years after its formal launch, the open method of co-ordination (OMC) continues to pose more questions than it seems to answer. Conceived politically as a fresh mode of dealing with old political issues in the European Union (EU) (Scott and Trubek 2002; Armstrong 2003; Ekengren 2002), the truth is that the OMC is still surrounded by much uncertainty; uncertainty as to what extent the open method might provide effective solutions to thorny coordination problems without further transfer of powers to Brussels; uncertainty as to how far the OMC might introduce novel mechanisms of deliberative and participatory democracy in the complex machinery of EU/member state political processes; and, all in all, uncertainty as to how far the OMC will succeed in managing diversity. The articles in this special issue bear witness to this. Taken collectively, their message is that the OMC introduces interesting novelties in the ways of understanding and carrying out EU policy and politics, but that these novelties are only able to make a change if some specific conditions are fulfilled. The absence of some of these political conditions has been behind the critical remarks of most authors and the normative lessons arising from their studies. So far, the OMC is able to generate optimism among scholars. But, as time goes by, more and more of this optimism is turning out to be conditional. This article aims to go back over the important questions raised in this special issue, and to provide some concluding (but not conclusive) remarks in the light of the evidence and the studies of the previous articles. In particular, we examine the nature of the OMC in relation to its large diversity across policy areas; we again take up the issue of effectiveness and compliance in the absence of sanctions, and discuss whether it is possible that the OMC will move away from bureaucratic management towards a new implementation of democratic values outside the classical democratic representation channels. Last but not least, we discuss the question of the limits to the use of the OMC.