The Politics of Labour that Underlies European Monetary Integration

Abstract

AbstractThe dominant literature on the development of the EU's new economic governance regime suggests that it constitutes another step towards integration in the European fiscal policy framework. However, I argue that this limited view neglects the politics of labour that underlies European monetary integration. In the euro area competitiveness adjustment is promoted, which means in practice fostering and facilitating the confrontation of workers by employers in order to keep unit labour costs down. The new economic governance reforms consistently reinforced this policy‐making logic. Its central innovation was the systematization and 'hardening' of the macroeconomic surveillance framework beyond fiscal policy, which created new competences at the EU level to intervene in national labour market policies, including wages. This is what is actually new about the new economic governance; marking a recent key moment in European monetary integration and reinforcing the politics of labour underlying it.