Abstract
ABSTRACTThis contribution analyses how EU social objectives and policy co-ordination have been integrated into the Union’s post-crisis governance architecture. It argues that between 2011 and 2016, there was a partial but progressive ‘socialization’ of the ‘European Semester’ of policy co-ordination, in terms of increasing emphasis on social objectives in its priorities and key messages, including the Country-Specific Recommendations; intensified social monitoring and review of national reforms; and an enhanced decision-making role for EU social and employment actors. In explaining these developments, the contribution highlights the contribution of strategic agency, reflexive learning and creative adaptation by social and employment actors to the new institutional conditions of the Semester, building on recent theoretical work on ‘actor-centred constructivism’ and the ‘usages of Europe’.
Highlights
Since the onset of the euro crisis, the European Union (EU) has introduced a series of far-reaching changes in its socio-economic governance architecture
In 2016, the improved accuracy of the Country-Specific Recommendations (CSRs) resulting from intensified dialogue with member states around the Country Reports appear to have reduced demand for amendments, while the Commission seems to have been more willing than in previous years to accept revisions proposed by Employment Committee (EMCO) and the Social Protection Committee (SPC) based on evidence from their multilateral surveillance reviews
Between 2011 and 2016, a partial but progressive socialization of the Semester occurred. This shift was visible at the level of substantive policy orientations, in terms of a growing emphasis on social objectives in the Annual Growth Survey (AGS) and especially the CSRs
Summary
For example, the ‘usages of Europe’ approach draws attention to how actors situated at the intersection between national and supranational policy-making (such as EU committees of member-state officials) may strategically exploit the ambiguities of European concepts, rules and procedures in order to reframe policy issues, build political coalitions, enhance their institutional influence, and justify decisions taken at the EU as well as the domestic level (Woll and Jacquot 2010: 116–7) In this contribution, we extend the insights of these agency-focused and possibility-orientated approaches by tracing how reflexive learning from past experience by key actors, especially on the social and employment side, together with creative adaptation of their own organization and practices to the new institutional conditions of the EU’s post-crisis governance architecture, has contributed to the partial but progressive socialization of the Semester. Crespy and Vanheuverzwijn (2016: 77–8) estimate that the proportion of social and employment policy measures in the CSRs promoting social investment rather than retrenchment expanded year by year from 50 per cent in 2011 to 60 per cent in 2014
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