European Semester Research Articles

Management and Enforcement Theories for Compliance with the Rule of Law

Abstract Following the contemporary debate surrounding two alternative perspectives on compliance – enforcement and management – this article suggests an analysis through the lens of the rule of law crisis. Specifically, the financial and techno-managerial strategy developed by the EU for the indirect protection of the rule of law relies on mechanisms that combine characteristics from both the enforcement and management approaches. This article will identify these mechanisms, namely the European Semester, the Conditionality regulation, the European Structural Investment Funds and the Recovery and Resilience Facility, in order to determine their nature, features, and tools for ensuring compliance with the rule of law. The hypothesis of this article relies on the idea that the EU’s tools are characterised by a mismatch between the causes of the identified problems and the chosen solutions. Considering that the deployment of the above measures has not re-established compliance, the EU strategy toes between inducing rule conformity on the one hand and deterring rule of law violations on the other. However, it seems that only the former can restore the rule of law, as the latter is considered ill-equipped to reverse or at least halt instances of backsliding. This mismatch explains why the Justice Scoreboard, the Framework, and the Review Cycle with its Annual Report have not made any difference, and more generally, why management strategies are unfit for dealing with deliberate backsliding.1

The European Semester as a Policy Instrument in Education—The Cases of Spain and Sweden

ABSTRACTIn this article we examine the European Semester as an innovative form of policy coordination, with distinct effects on education and skills policies for Member States. We analyse the Semester's framing of education policy, and examine its manifestations in Spain and Sweden, two countries considered to be different in their approach to education. Drawing on a policy instrumentation approach and interviews with policy actors and documentary analysis, our research suggests that while the Semester has given education policy a significant place within the EU's governance, economic rationales for education are clearly dominant in the process. Still, we identify underpinning logics that strengthen the social and educational perspectives represented in the Semester, although these are still treated as productive forces for labour market integration. In addition, there is a strengthening of collaboration between the European Commission and Member States, but also tensions between different parts of the Commission over the definition and direction of education policy.

Post-COVID-19 European Country-Specific Recommendations on adult education, training, and skills: Content, focus, shifts, and patterns

The COVID-19 pandemic significantly disrupted economic and social life across Europe and the wider world. Currently, the European Commission is heavily investing in recovery and resilience facilities to encourage economic and social reforms in Member States. As part of the European Semester, the Commission formulates annual Country-Specific Recommendations (CSRs) to steer and advice Member States on their policy directions. This paper aims to investigate to what extent the European Commission’s recommendations include advice on education, training, and skills development to boost economic and social progress. Four specific aims were to investigate (1) the content of CSRs that mention the need for actions relevant to adult education, training, and skills development, (2) the extent to which these CSRs focus on economic versus social goals, or both, (3) the extent to which the content and focus of these CSRs shifts over years, and (4) the extent to which there are visible patterns within the content and focus of CSRs across the 27 EU Member States. Results indicate that CSRs in the first year of the COVID-19 lockdowns – 2020 – heavily focussed on the need for digital skills development. CSRs in 2022 were not dominated by advice on education, training, and skills development apart from the focus on skills mismatches in some countries. The 2023 CSRs were strongly targeted towards the need for green skills development. In line with previous academic debates around education and training, CSRs contained text on economic and social goals, although social aspects tend to lead back to the integration of vulnerable adults in the labour market for economic purposes, instead of treating education holistically. While CSRs are country-specific, it is clear from the analyses that core recommendations feature across Member States, linked to broad European agendas such as the Twin transition to a green and digital economy.

Explaining different usages of policy monitoring in the EU

ABSTRACT The EU increasingly relies on forms of policy monitoring. While functioning policy monitoring remains the ‘critical underlying assumption’ of many approaches such as (performance) auditing, the European Semester or sector specific approaches such as the Energy Union, it remains underexplored. Monitoring has been portrayed as a technical exercise, but we contend that it may be used in different ways. To explain under what conditions different usages are pursued, this article proposes a new typology to explain different usages of policy monitoring, based on combinations of the level of (dis)agreement on policy goals and instruments, and (un)certainty about the effectiveness and the implementation of the policy instruments. The paper then presents a plausibility probe of our typology in two policy areas: agriculture and climate change/energy. We find that many, but not all, expectations of our model bear out; future research should explore additional substantial policy areas and the impact available resources have on the quality of monitoring.

Driving the EU working conditions directive: social partner reactivity and the limits to commission entrepreneurship

The EU’s social dimension has been strengthened since the mid-2010s. Recent research has shown how Commission entrepreneurship in meta-governance such as the European Pillar of Social Rights and the European Semester turned existing regulation in a more ‘social’ direction or led to new regulation strengthening Social Europe. This article asks whether the Commission also stands out as the most important actor in initiatives focused exclusively on working conditions and if the European social partners also in these are secondary reactive actors. Focusing on a recent case where the social partners had a treaty-based right to bargain—the Working Conditions Directive—the article confirms the Commission’s dominance and the reactivity of the social partners. The choice not to bargain reduces the social partners to lobbyists attempting to influence other key actors. However, the case also shows the limits to Commission entrepreneurship in that EU member states and the European Parliament were able to influence the outcome in important ways.

Strengthening the European Semester to Achieve Economies of Wellbeing.

The environmental crisis, growing levels of social inequalities and rising levels of noncommunicable diseases are all symptoms of economic systems that are failing to generate wellbeing. There is increasing support for the notion that addressing these crises requires shifting the focus from economic growth to a broader range of measures that reflect wellbeing, through more comprehensive, consistent and integrated policy approaches to deliver this. In 2019, the EU Finnish Council Presidency Council Conclusions called amongst other things for the development of a new long-term, post-2020 strategy to provide the framework for horizontal assessment and cross-sectoral collaboration, in particular through the European Semester process. This article contextualises this call and explores its follow-up. It draws from key policy documents to explore what Economies of Wellbeing are, why and how the concept has emerged and how they can be put in place. It then explores to what extent this concept is being applied at the EU level, by tracking changes in some of the EU's key policies and strategies over the past 10 years and in the Semester process, as a mechanism to implement them. It concludes that while progress towards more comprehensive, consistent and integrated policy approaches has been made in the context of the Annual Sustainable Growth Strategy, underpinning the Semester processes, it is limited by the continuing emphasis on economic, over other policy, areas. It also argues that the process needs to be broadened even further, to include other dimensions of wellbeing, which intersect with the economy and impact wellbeing. To strengthen the European Semester process to achieve Economies of Wellbeing, it should be put at the service of an even more consistent and comprehensive EU Strategy that enables policy sectors to deliver wellbeing objectives in a more integrated and coordinated manner. This paper ends with recommendations for action.

Is the EU steering national social and health policy making? A case-study on Finland's national reform

As part of the European Semester, Finland received country-specific recommendations (CSRs) in 2013–2020 that encouraged the reform of national social and health services. These recommendations were part of efforts to balance public finances and implement public-sector structural reforms. Finland has been struggling to reform the national social and health care system since 2005. Only on 1 January 2023 did the new wellbeing services counties become liable for organizing social, health, and rescue services. Studying the CSRs for Finland enables us to understand better what genuinely occurs at the EU member state level. This data-driven case study aims to disclose the relevance of the European Semester for Finland in the pursuit of a national social and health system reform. The mixed-method approach is based on the research tradition of governance, and the study contains features of data sourcing and methodological triangulation. Empirically, the research material consists of Finland's official policy documents and anonymous semi-structured elite interviews. The study highlights that although the received CSRs on the need to restructure social and health services corresponded to Finland's views, their influence to national reform efforts was limited. The CSRs were administered according to the established formal routines, but separately from the national reform preparations. The CSRs, however, delivered implicit steering, which were considered to affect social and health policy making in various ways.

The European Pillar of Social Rights: How strategic agency shaped the European Union's flagship social initiative

AbstractThe European Pillar of Social Rights sits at the fulcrum of EU social policymaking. This article aims to explore its legal and political character, how it was shaped in the adoption process and its place within Social Europe. The key argument is that the Social Pillar builds on but also critically modifies previous initiatives present within the broader EU governance framework, notably in the European Semester. Key political actors like Commission President Jean‐Claude Juncker and parliamentary rapporteur Maria João Rodrigues contributed to the adoption process not only through their long‐held political views but also by bringing to bear their own critical reflections on previous EU initiatives. Methodologically, the article relies on 15 interviews with policy experts and uses an interdisciplinary approach based on legal analysis, process tracing and actor‐centred constructivist theory. The contribution of the article is threefold: (1) it helps to better understand the EU's social flagship initiative and the modifications of its governance approach compared with previous initiatives, (2) it sheds new light on the tensions and opportunities of social policymaking within the EU and (3) it shows the added value of actor‐centred constructivist approaches on a theoretical level.

Predictive strength of Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure indicators

Motivation: The Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure (MIP) is a key step in the European Semester, aimed at the coordination of the economic policies of the EU Member States to prevent excessive macroeconomic imbalances in the EU and support structural reforms. The MIP was originally envisaged as a legal tool for crisis prevention, allowing macroeconomic imbalances to be detected and then remedied, but is also used as an Early Warning System. However, the real strength of MIP indicators to predict crises has not been proved in practice and is widely contested in the literature.Aim: Fourteen scoreboard (“main”) and 28 auxiliary MIP indicators are currently in use. This paper is aimed at the assessment of the power of all MIP indicators in predicting crises.Results: The added value of our research is to test the MIP’s ability to predict changes in GDP, which may be considered as a proxy for the deterioration or improvement of the economic situation. Very little investigation has been done in this area so far. In addition, to our knowledge, no research papers have investigated the relevance of auxiliary MIP indicators. Our results show that only four main indicators (house price index, nominal unit labour cost index, general government sector debt, and export market shares) and another four auxiliary indicators (residential construction as percentage of GDP, activity rate, people living in households with very low work intensity, and export performance against advanced economies) seem to be able to predict the upcoming crises.

NextGenerationEU and the European Semester: Comparing National Plans and Country‐Specific Recommendations

This article examines the main features of the Recovery and Resilience Plans (RRPs) that member states have presented to access NextGenerationEU (NGEU) funds, and it explores the relationship between NGEU and the European Semester. Relying on a dataset collected for this purpose, which coded all RRPs and all recommendations received by the member states in the years preceding NGEU, we explore quantitatively the variation in the countries’ resource allocation and reform agendas and the congruence between RRPs and the recommendations issued in the European Semester. Our analysis reveals three key findings. First, substantial variation exists across member states, reflecting the diverse economic and political contexts shaped by a decade of crises. Second, by disaggregating RRPs into the six policy pillars indicated by the Commission, we show differences in the member states’ patterns of intervention. Third, we offer insights into the extent to which member states address the Semester recommendations. The data we present is a relevant tool for understanding NGEU and generating research questions aimed at exploring its nature and its implementation in the years to come.

The National Recovery and Resilience Plans: Towards a Next Generation of Fiscal Coordination?

The Recovery and Resilience Facility reflects unprecedented solidarity through common financing paired with an innovative governance framework. Member states can access grants and loans through the formulation of National Recovery and Resilience Plans, under a set of conditions that include minimum allocation targets and addressing country-specific recommendations. The analysis evaluates whether the governance of the Recovery and Resilience Facility mitigates one of the longstanding weaknesses of the Economic and Monetary Union architecture: fiscal coordination. Assessing the prevalence of green, digital, and social priorities in the (a) National Recovery and Resilience Plans, (b) the country-specific recommendations, and (c) party manifestos through a quantitative and qualitative text analysis shows some convergence toward supranational preferences, albeit only in the green domain. I provide preliminary evidence at the stage of the formulation of the plans of the effectiveness of the Recovery and Resilience Facility fiscal policy coordination by testing whether recovery agendas in the National Recovery and Resilience Plans reflect EU or national priorities. Deviating from the limited implementation of country-specific recommendations within the European Semester, the analysis indicates the governance of the Recovery and Resilience Facility orients the National Recovery and Resilience Plans toward fostering a green recovery. Findings contribute to the assessment of how pandemic recovery instruments innovate EU fiscal governance and longstanding discussions on the ineffectiveness of fiscal coordination within the Economic and Monetary Union, informing the ongoing debate on the reform of the Stability and Growth Pact and a permanent successor to the Recovery and Resilience Facility.

How the impossible became possible: evolving frames and narratives on responsibility and responsiveness from the Eurocrisis to NextGenerationEU

ABSTRACT This paper explains how a turn in EU governance which was unthinkable only a few months prior became possible in 2020. Rather than a sudden paradigm shift brought about by the pandemic, we argue that it occurred through successive episodes of reinterpreting the rules and layering on new instruments while fostering investment and fiscal sharing on top of the pre-existing ordoliberal regime. Through a discursive institutionalist lens, the paper supports these claims by studying the frames and narratives of French, German and EU leaders during three rounds of reforms, namely the flexibilization of the European Semester (2014–2016), the adoption of the Budgetary Instrument for Convergence and Competitiveness (BICC) (2017–2019), and the adoption of the Recovery and Resilience Facility (2020–2021). The analysis shows that an increased awareness of a responsiveness imperative, going beyond national constituencies, transformed European elites’ conceptions of ‘responsible’ government thus at least momentarily closing the gap between responsibility and responsiveness.

Money Makes the World Go Round: How Much Difference Do Recovery and Resilience Plans Make to EU Reform Governance?

AbstractThe Next Generation EU (NGEU) package transformed European economic governance. This article examines the implications of this change in terms of EU polity formation and in terms of social policy content. It asks whether the temporary availability of large funds increases the leverage of the Commission in the European Semester and how this innovation affects sensitive policies. In the tradition of Stein Rokkan, the article advances a conception of the EU as a compound polity that needs to reconcile dispersed authority with second‐order loyalty. We then contrast our theoretical expectations with traditional reform surveillance and experimentalist governance theories. The drafting of Recovery and Resilience Plans for Italy and Spain provides the empirical basis for assessing these expectations. The analysis shows a dual effect: adding fiscal capacity to the European Semester enhances the Commission's hierarchical power whilst the need to ensure member states' loyalty leaves room for national executives to insist on their priorities.

Unpacking the European Commission's fiscal policy response to crisis: mapping and explaining economic ideas in the European Semester 2011–2022

ABSTRACT In this paper, we examine how and why the European Commission's ideas on fiscal policy have changed over the course of the European Semester. Empirically, we rely on a semi-supervised scaling approach to identify economic ideas as they appear in Semester documents from the aftermath of the financial crisis onwards (2011-2022). Our findings demonstrate a gradual shift in ideas from an ordoliberal to a Keynesian direction, especially during the overlapping Von der Leyen and Covid-19 crisis years. We identify substantial country-specific differences throughout 2011–2022, with some countries receiving exclusively Keynesian recommendations, and others distinctively ordoliberal ones. These patterns can be explained in part by economic conditions in those member states but not by the public's trust in the EU. These results underscore the reactive nature of the Commission's economic ideology; crises, as well as member states’ economic conditions, shape the direction of its fiscal policy recommendations.

No Borrowing Without Taxing? Fiscal Solidarity of Next Generation EU in Light of the American Experience

This article argues that the EU response to the pandemic, the Next Generation EU (NGEU), dubbed a “Hamiltonian moment” for Europe, can be better understood if compared to the US under the Articles of Confederation. The key aspect of the original Hamiltonian moment was the assumption of states’ debts after the Union was given tax power. None of this happened with the NGEU. The EU was not given any significant new sources of revenue, apart from some environmental levies, and was only allowed to borrow more on the financial markets to finance new fiscal solidarity mechanisms. In the US, this kind of borrowing power gave rise to monetary financing of the debt and enormous inflation. Instead of backing the enlarged borrowing powers with a fiscalization process leading to tax powers, the EU created a hybrid system of temporary, limited quasi-fiscalization in the form of the NGEU, which has legitimacy gaps. Simultaneously, the EU introduced enhanced fiscal regulation with conditionalities in the form of the new European Semester (an annual EU cycle of economic and fiscal coordination) tied to the allocation of the NGEU funds. Additionally, the EU has only promised to work in the future on various forms of revenue needed to pay the new debt. Hence, I will show that the NGEU could be better described as a “Morrisian moment” for Europe, as Robert Morris, the superintendent of finance of the US (1781–1784), was the very first finance minister of a similar kind of a union, with the power to borrow but no power to tax, governed by the unanimity rule in fiscal matters, which led to the failure of his proposals for national revenue.

Sustainalibity elements of the Best-ReMaP Joint Action

Abstract To enable sustainabile and effective uptake of recommended actions, key policy-relevant messages are conveyed: (1) enable the implementation of processed food monitoring and reformulation by ensuring personnel and resources for institutionalized actions at governmental level; re-establish platforms at European level like former HLG on nutrition and PA to facilitate knowledge exchange; (2) reduce the marketing of unhealthy foods to children via adoption of government-led regulatory approaches; policies cover the reduction, preferably the removal of marketing of unhealthy foods in a broad set of marketing types and techniques; raise the age threshold for marketing regulations to 18 years; define the foods and drink products to be restricted from marketing through a strict government-led NPM, based on the WHO Europe NPM, as outlined in the revised 2018 AVMSD; enforce a national food marketing code by an assigned national administrative body, and ensure financial and human resources to cover the workload related to food marketing monitoring; (3) support actions in public food procurement policies by the involvement of inter-sectoral collaboration in MSs; facilitate the policies in this field by collaboration with an EU public food procurement network to share knowledge and experiences among MSs; align the implementation of the public food procurement legislation for MSs; guarantee a sufficient budget for public food procurement and cooperate on the interventions with relevant sectors and stakeholders, such as the parents, communities. A Food System Sustainability Scoreboard was proposed as a mean of how to insert a monitoring mechanisms of the food system sustainability in the European Semester. DG JRC has elaborated on the FABLE testing branded foods EU open database. MSs are indicating the overall expressed need for re-establishing the high level collaboration in the areas of nutrition, physical activity and obesity at the EU level.

7.A. Workshop: How could sustainable public food policies add to curbing childhood obesity in EU? Best-ReMaP case

Abstract Childhood obesity is a global public health problem in Europe and worldwide, influenced mainly by the nutrition and physical in/activity behaviours which are impacted by the structural food environment in which the child and his/her caregivers make lifestyle decisions. Individual eating behaviour is a complex societal practice, influenced by structural factors of the obesogenic environment with several health risks. Overweight and its associated chronic diseases (NCDs) reduce life expectancy in OECD countries by 2.7 years on average and 8.4% of the health budget of OECD countries will be spent to treat the consequences of overweight over the next thirty years. Including direct and indirect effects, overweight and obesity reduces GDP by 3.3% on average in both OECD countries and EU28 Member States. Joint Action ‘Best-ReMaP - Healthy Food for a Healthy Future’ (www.bestremap.eu)of 24 participating EU Member states (MSs) aims to contribute to positive changes in food environment in EU, by contributing to the improvement the quality of the food offer in EU, while placing public health at the centre of food systems-related policies and practice. With an ultimate goal to support EU and national efforts to reduce the burden of NCDs, Best-ReMaP addresses the selected food policies from three interrelated angles, which could influence children's food choices: (1) food reformulation (how the composition of the processed foods can be better monitored and producers more motivated to reformulate for healthier food options at the European and national levels); (2) reduction of food marketing (how the traditional and digital food marketing and advertising activities could be better monitored and regulated), and (3) public food procurements - PFP (how public institutions could procure foods that's healthier, of higher quality and more sustainable). Different actions have been considered, allowing for the possible sustainable implementation of the three up-mentioned policies, such as: three policy frameworks, food system indicator for the EU Semester, EU level branded foods database, different networks (experts, high level), equity aspects (existing knowledge and research gaps). The workshop is aiming to: • Showcase the value of monitoring of concrete food policies, to enable the regular reporting on the progress and implementation obstacles and argued engagement with stakeholders. • Increase participants’ understanding and awareness of the challenges of the concrete sustainable implementation of actions of the Best-ReMaP food policies. The workshop will offer an opportunity to: • Present the sustainable outputs of the Best-ReMaP implementation approaches, outlining the attempts in harmonizing monitoring actions for food reformulation and marketing, and piloting the PFP tools. • Inform participants about the benefits of the sustainable EU frameworks for three policy actions, and other sustainability mechanisms, developed by the Best-ReMaP consortium. Key messages • New evidence on the sustainable implementation of the policy actions in Best-ReMaP food policies (reformulation, marketing, public food procurement) are presented. • Three frameworks for action for EU and MSs, and food system indicator for the European Semester are discussed.

Strengthening health system resilience at the European level

Abstract The resilience testing project builds on the work carried out by the ‘Expert Panel on effective ways of investing in health’ in its ‘opinion on the organisation of resilient health and social care following the COVID-19 pandemic’, adopted on 25 November 2020 as well as the December 2020 report by the EU Expert Group on Health Systems Performance Assessment (HSPA) titled ‘Assessing the resilience of health systems in Europe: an overview of the theory, current practice and strategies for improvement’. Resilience testing may contribute to the European Semester, which addresses health system effectiveness, accessibility and resilience. The encompassing resilience assessment framework (‘the testing framework’) will serve to detect critical health system weaknesses against specific shocks as well as long-term structural challenges. This will help to develop recommendations for remedial action. The heath system resilience testing methodology will support the implementation of the Regulation on serious cross-border threats to health which envisages stress tests and simulation exercises to help the development of health system functions and preparation of prevention, preparedness and response plans. It could also support the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) in their assessment activities of the prevention, preparedness and response plans. By establishing a resilience testing methodology, Member States will be able to regularly and independently review their preparedness for health crisis and check their healthcare systems’ resilience against specific high-pressure scenarios and long-term structural challenges. This action will generate insight and evidence through resilience tests and will reinforce the ability of Member States and regions to become more resilient to future shocks.

Crisis and paradigm change in the European semester: from austerity to investment-oriented policy ideas

ABSTRACT The policy-responses to the COVID-19 pandemic have fuelled expectations about potential paradigmatic change in European Economic Governance (EEG). Building on existing scholarship on policy paradigms, we develop testable expectations about the steps preceding paradigmatic change, which we explore on the basis of three types of data. First, we show how public spending in three key Eurozone countries between 2008 and 2021 follows predicted patterns of the punctuated equilibrium model. Second, we show that governments’ justifications for their annual budgets reflect a gradual change in policy-ideas between 2009 and 2020, following the expected three orders of change. Third, we show how this gradual change is also present in the European Country-Specific Recommendations and in the bureaucratic logics within the European Commission. Our findings reconcile three strands of scholarship on policy change and have implications for our understanding of the European integration process and for future research on economic policy-making within EEG.

El Semestre Europeo 2023 y el Mecanismo de Recuperación y Resiliencia

Rationale Since 2020, the European Semester has been immersed in a large-scale restructuring process, to adapt to an environment in constant change. At the same time, it has continued to adapt to the implementation of the Recovery and Resilience Facility. Moreover, in 2024, coinciding with the deactivation of the general escape clause of the Stability and Growth Pact, a new fiscal governance framework will have to be adopted, which will continue to be integrated in the European Semester. Takeaways •The main new feature in the current cycle is the European Commission’s legislative proposal for reform of the European Union’s fiscal rules, which should pave the way for the adoption of a new fiscal governance framework integrated in the European Semester. •To facilitate the transition towards the future fiscal rules and to take into account the present challenges, some elements of the proposal have been incorporated into the current fiscal surveillance cycle, via country-specific recommendations. •The recommendations for Spain for 2024 include a quantitative requirement that limits nationally financed nominal primary expenditure to 2.6%, as well as qualitative guidance on investment and energy measures.