European Semester Research Articles

What's the Problem? Multilevel Governance and Problem‐Solving

The study of multilevel governance (MLG) is fundamentally concerned with the capacity of MLG to effectively deal with policy problems. However, the notion of problem‐solving itself remains vague. Moreover, MLG research prioritizes questions of structure and agency, while neglecting the role and nature of policy problems themselves. This symposium defines problem‐solving in both procedural and operational terms. The introduction reviews relevant attributes of policy problems and existing assumptions about their influence on problem‐solving. By adding uncertainty, tractability, and three political attributes (power, conflict, salience), we propose an extended list of attributes of policy problems that matter for problem‐solving, and link them to different notions of procedural and operational problem‐solving in MLG. The contributions address the challenges facing problem‐solving in the European Union, adopting a particular focus on the characteristics of policy problems. Empirical cases include the European Semester, Brexit, the governance of the swine flu pandemic, and climate change.

The European Semester: Democratic Weaknesses as Limits to Learning

In this contribution to the symposium “What's the problem? Multilevel governance and problem‐solving,” we discuss possible reasons that make difficult for the European Semester to achieve the goals of developing mutual learning and the acquisition of “ownership” over fiscal restraint, budgetary coordination and structural reforms. We underscore the uneasy coupling of a “soft” multilevel governance mode with “hard” forms of governance associated with power politics and domination. We claim that four major problems undermine the Semester's credibility and effectiveness: (1) a democratic deficit resulting from executive dominance, the relative sidelining of parliaments and the marginalization of the public, which confine learning to governmental and administrative circles; (2) the constitutionalization of budgetary policy choices, which constrains the available policy options and preempts reflection and discussion; (3) the “disciplinary logic” imposed through asymmetric intergovernmentalism, which invites noncompliance or bargaining, and (4) the “tough” treatment of debtor Eurozone members outside the Semester.

Influence of the European Semester on national public sector reforms under conditions of fiscal consolidation: The policy of conditionality in Italy 2011–2015

This article applies the Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier “governance by conditionality” framework to public sector reform in a European Union (EU) country subject to implicit rather than explicit conditionality in the context of severe fiscal consolidation. It analyses the reform programmes of the governments that alternated in power in Italy over 2011–2015, focusing on three major areas of public sector reform – fiscal consolidation, labour market reform and liberalization – in the context of the Country-Specific Recommendations–National Reform Plan (CSR-NRP) cycle. We show that the EU has influenced governance (budget institutions and the governance structure of the NRP process) as well as the content of reforms. These results are consistent with the Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier framework regarding the importance of external incentives in explaining adoption and implementation of reforms. Our findings confirm not only the importance of material conditions and their credibility in explaining the fit between EU recommendations and domestic reforms, but also the significance of the strategic usage of Europe by domestic policy makers, which has become more important as the legitimacy of the EU has decreased among voters. We conclude with some reflections on the implications of our research for the ongoing debate on the reform of the European Semester, in particular with regard to the question of how to ensure a higher fit between EU recommendation and domestic policies.

Building national ownership of the European Semester: the role of European Semester officers

ABSTRACTThe European Semester of socio-economic policy coordination has been criticised for poor capacity to induce national ownership of reforms. Reacting to these pressures, the European Commission intensified bilateral and multilateral efforts to increase the legitimacy of the Semester. European Semester officers (ESOs) were sent to Commission’s representations in Member States to reinforce policy dialogue. This paper spells out to what extent and how ESOs contribute to national ownership and throughput legitimacy of the European Semester in Member States. The findings suggest that ESOs are an important domestic link in fostering throughput legitimacy of the European semester by way of establishing dialogue with domestic actors and justifying the reasoning behind Commission’s initiatives. Conversely, they succeed less in transmitting stakeholders’ policy concerns and suggestions to the Commission. ESOs’ domestic engagement could, nonetheless, serve as an entry point for Commission’s future efforts in building domestic ownership and hence reducing blame-shifting practices.

Social dialogue under the shadow of the EU: the failure of Hollande’s social conferences

Annual tripartite social conferences were introduced in France in 2012, pre-empting EU ambitions to reinvigorate the social dialogue at EU and national levels. Despite some successes, they did not live up to their ambitions to elicit consensus and give trade unions a voice in policymaking due to: opposition to, and protest against, government policy from some unions; the avoidance of discussion on contentious legislation; and the constraints of the Country Specific Recommendations arising out of the European Semester. The French experience of social dialogue suggests that the chances of the EU achieving its ambition of building consensus over economic and social reform through reinvigorating the social dialogue appear slim.

Socialising the European Semester? Measuring Member States’ Implementation of Country-Specific Recommendations in the Social Policy Field

This Working Paper surveys the extent to which Member States comply with CSRs relating to social policy. This provides a yardstick by which to measure their compliance with both the European semester and adherence to the principles of the European Pillar of Social Rights. Looking more closely at the implementation of CSRs at the national level will also aid in apportioning responsibility for policies weakening welfare state and social protection.

Реформа государственного управления в Хорватии: Медленная модернизация в условиях европеизации устойчивой к изменениям бюрократии

Over-politicization co-exists in the Croatian public administration with legalism, formalism and red tape. Low reform, innovation and initiative capacities are among the results of such an administrative model. Croatia has a relatively big and strong but ineffcient public administration. Internal bureaucratic resistance to modernization is observable. Foreign actors play a moderate role in administrative reform. The European Union has exerted the strongest influence on modernization on the basis of conditionality policy, insistence on the administrative capacity building, and the European Semester procedure. E-government policy, transparency, and strategic planning are the reform areas with the above-average reform results.

EUROPEAN INTEGRATION AND GOVERNANCE – CHALLENGES AND PERSPECTIVES

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.

Choosing channels. Intra-state and extra-state strategies of Belgian subnational authorities in response to the European Semester

ABSTRACTEuropeanization literature has found that, in general, subnational authorities prefer to target the EU indirectly via member state channels. This article tests whether these findings hold in the non-legislative domain of the European Semester. With respect to the Belgian case, the article concludes that all Belgian subnational authorities indeed primarily use the cooperative intra-state channels as a response to the domestic division of competences and the EU decision-making procedures. It also finds that in addition especially Flanders invests substantially in extra-state strategies towards EU institutions. The article concludes that stronger time constraints, lower compliance pressure and the more politically salient issues of the European Semester trigger the most prosperous and identity prone region to adopt additional extra-state channels on top of the dominant intra-state channels.

El análisis económico y presupuestario en las Cortes Generales. Un continuo proceso de adaptación

La Constitución Española de 1978 estableció las bases del estado social y de una hacienda pública moderna. Desde entonces, la función económica del parlamento se ha visto sometida un continuo proceso de transformación que ha afectado tanto al control de la política económica en general como al ejercicio de sus competencias específicas en el procedimiento presupuestario. Por un lado, el crecimiento del gasto público requirió la modernización del presupuesto para asegurar un adecuado control de las finanzas públicas. Por otro, el doble proceso de descentralización autonómica e integración europea ha obligado a desarrollar mecanismos de coordinación entre todos los niveles de gobierno para garantizar la estabilidad presupuestaria.
 En este artículo, se realiza un recorrido por el proceso de adaptación que han llevado a cabo los servicios de estudios y análisis económico y presupuestario en el Congreso para ofrecer, con los medios disponibles, un apoyo técnico a las específicas funciones parlamentarias en la tramitación de los Presupuestos Generales del Estado y una información completa, objetiva y sistemática sobre el ciclo presupuestario y la ejecución presupuestaria en su conjunto. Más recientemente, la política presupuestaria, ordenada en torno al Semestre Europeo, ha ido abarcando ámbitos cada vez más amplios de la política económica, y las instituciones europeas reclaman una mayor implicación de los parlamentos nacionales en la gobernanza económica, apoyados en el principio de transparencia y en unos medios técnicos suficientes.

The new EU industrial policy: authoritarian neoliberal structural adjustment and the case for alternatives

ABSTRACTIn 2017, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker declared the re-industrialization of the European Union (EU) a top priority. The new EU industrial policy seeks to boost industrial competitiveness and leverage investments into manufacturing, thereby increasing industry’s share of EU Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to 20% by 2020. What may appear to be a Keynesian industrial policy and thus a move away from the EU’s previous neoliberal agenda, however, seeks to calibrate a further neoliberal structural adjustment in a highly authoritarian fashion. Internal devaluation through devaluing labour, intensifying competition and reducing corporate taxes takes centre-stage. As an auxiliary to the European Semester, national productivity boards have been established to monitor wage developments alongside labour productivity and to suggest policy adjustments when cost competitiveness lags behind the Eurozone average and that of the main trading partners. Not only have formal democratic institutions and organized labour been circumvented in the decision-making process regarding such boards, they will have little voice in the future, and this an area that hitherto fell largely within the scope of member states: wage bargaining. Hence, the new EU industrial policy needs to be discredited, de-legitimized and thus, politicized. A political counter-project, rooted in an alternative industrial policy geared towards fostering horizontal and democratic solidarity economy initiatives which have proliferated since 2008, is discussed in the article’s closing pages.

The legitimacy gaps of the European Semester: who decides, what and how

Cet article analyse la manière dont les institutions européennes ont tenté de résoudre les problèmes de légitimité du Semestre européen depuis sa première itération. L’article montre que depuis 2010 le Semestre a connu plusieurs adaptations tant de iure (suite à l’adoption du Two et Six Pack) que de facto, à travers des interactions et accords interinstitutionnels. L’article est organisé en trois temps : la première section présente le Semestre européen, mettant en exergue ses caractéristiques et les acteurs impliqués. La deuxième section passe en revue les problèmes de légitimité, alors que la troisième et dernière partie se penche sur l’évolution institutionnelle du Semestre comme résultat de l’évolution de sa base légale et des processus d’apprentissage, de négociation et de compromis entre les institutions européennes.

Intergovernmental or supranational integration? A quantitative analysis of pension recommendations in the European Semester

The European Semester, launched in 2011, enhances the coordination of macroeconomic policies among European Union member states. This article contributes to the lively scholarly debate on whether this policy-making cycle has empowered more the European supranational or intergovernmental institutions. Drawing on a new dataset covering all pension-related country-specific recommendations between 2011 and 2016, and employing an original quantitative method, we show that the Commission mainly follows a ‘technocratic’ approach in drafting its recommendations, which are grounded in objective indicators. As the Council refrains from systematically altering the recommendations’ logic, we conclude that, at least in pension policy, the Commission’s role in macroeconomic surveillance has been significantly strengthened in the aftermath of the Great Recession.

Macro‐economic coordination and elusive ownership in the European Union

The notion of ownership is well known in relation to global governance. In the realm of EU macro‐economic coordination, it has become a buzzword since the revamping process of the European Semester in 2015. This article investigates how ownership by four types of domestic actors (governments, administrations, parliaments and social partners) manifests itself in the European Semester. We conceptualize three types of ownership, namely institutional, political, and cognitive. Using network analysis, semi‐structured interviews, and a small‐scale survey, we find that ownership is strongest among governments and administrations which are able to shape the outputs of the European Semester (institutional ownership) with little political disagreement (political ownership). While national parliaments display low levels of all types of ownership, employers and unions exhibit relatively strong cognitive ownership. We conclude that the European Semester remains a bureaucratic process contributing to building a multi‐level administrative space rather than an arena for political debates.

EU 경제거버넌스로서 유럽예산회기제(European Semester)와 그 실효성에 관한 연구

EU 경제거버넌스로서 유럽예산회기제(European Semester)와 그 실효성에 관한 연구

Bread and butter or bread and circuses? Politicisation and the European Commission in the European Semester.

Does domestic contestation of European Union legitimacy affect the behaviour of the European Commission as an economic and fiscal supervisor? We draw on theories of bureaucratic responsiveness and employ multilevel and topic modelling to examine the extent to which the politicisation of European integration affects the outputs of the European Semester: the Country-Specific Recommendations. We develop two competing sets of hypotheses and test these on an original large-N data set on Commission behaviour with observations covering the period 2011–2017. We detect a twofold effect on the Commission's recommendations: member states that experience greater politicisation receive recommendations that are larger in scope but whose substance is less oriented towards social investment. We argue that this effect is best explained as an outcome of the Commission's institutional risk management strategy of regulatory ‘entrenchment’. The supranational agent issues additional recommendations while simultaneously entrenching on a stronger mandate substantively, which allows it to maintain its regulatory reputation and signal regulatory resolve to observing audiences.

Scrutinising the European Semester in national parliaments: what are the drivers of parliamentary involvement?

How exactly are national parliaments involved in the European Semester? The stronger coordination of fiscal and economic policies in the European Union (EU) in reaction to the sovereign debt crisis has forced national parliaments to adapt their procedures. This article examines how the European Semester is scrutinised and what factors have driven parliamentary activities in the French National Assembly, the German Bundestag, the Irish Dáil and the Portuguese Assembleia between 2012 and 2017. Particularly noteworthy is that legal provisions for a parliamentary debate on the Stability Programme can be ignored in France, that the German Bundestag is much less active in the European Semester than in EU affairs or in the budget process and that the weakness of Ireland’s parliament in the annual budget procedure affects its role in the European Semester. This article therefore suggests defining minimum standards for parliamentary involvement and strengthening interparliamentary cooperation.

Accountability challenges in EU economic governance? Parliamentary scrutiny of the European Semester

This paper sets out to address to what extent and how national parliaments scrutinize the European Semester process. My central argument is that the European semester constitutes a complex regime of different policy-making modes, which poses severe challenges for effective parliamentary scrutiny of the process. Through paired comparison between two Nordic parliaments and the Spanish parliament, I identify a number of accountability challenges in the scrutiny of the European Semester. Although we should expect that parliaments of euro countries are more motivated for scrutinizing the European Semester as the process has stronger implications for national budgetary policy, the findings show the importance of formal monitoring capabilities. Thus, the ability to counteract the accountability challenges of the European Semester is not equal across parliamentary chambers of the EU leading to a reinforcement of existing differences of parliamentary involvement in EU policy-making.

Towards a strengthened coordination between the EU and national budgets. A complementary role and a joint control for parliaments?

The European Parliament (EP) and national parliament (NPs) occupy two opposite but complementary positions as budgetary authorities in the EU and, indeed, democratic legitimacy of EU and national budgetary procedures can hardly be conceived without taking into account NPs and the EP together. Framed within the discourse on throughput legitimacy, the article analyses if and to what extent the EP and NPs are involved in the decisions on EU revenues and expenditures as well as in the European Semester and what initiatives has the EP supported to enhance its participation and that of NPs in those domains. Given the unsatisfactory status quo, the article put forwards the proposal of a joint parliamentary control carried out by an interparliamentary committee on EU and national budgets to redress the problem of a lack of coordinated democratic scrutiny over them, in addition to the control carried out by the EP and NPs individually.

National parliaments and EU economic performance policies. Impact defines involvement?

In recent years, decision-making on economic performance policies – macroeconomic stability and structural reforms – has evolved from a system based on Broad Economic Policy Guidelines into a full-fledged part of the European Semester, including the possibility to sanction Member States. This suggests an increased role for national parliaments to ensure the democratic legitimacy of EU decision-making. But this need for democratic legitimacy is qualified by the impacts of economic performance policies in and on the Member States. This contribution assesses these impacts by reviewing arguments derived from (a) the applicable legal framework and prior research that has been carried out and (b) by conducting a comparative analysis of the policy dialogues with Germany, France, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands in 2014 (based primarily on National Reform Programmes and Country Specific Recommendations). Next, an assessment is made of how parliaments in these countries have been involved concretely in economic performance policies.