This 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'.
How and why did the European Semester end up as the main institutional vehicle of the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF)? To what extent did this new set‐up change the power balance among key ...actors (for example, financial and economic actors versus social affairs actors)? Drawing on historical institutionalism and based on 28 semi‐structured interviews and document analysis, our assessment suggests that while social actors were initially side‐lined and national executives strengthened, over time the pendulum is swinging back. The usual actors are strategically using the institutional structures of the revised Semester as a vehicle to ‘have a say’ in the RRF. Having more carrots and sticks suggests further strengthening the pivotal role of the European Commission. Yet having the option of submitting national plans gives member states options too. The EU institutional response to the Covid‐19 pandemic built on, and further cemented, the EU's socio‐economic governance architecture.
In the context of macro-economic surveillance, the European Union(EU) increasingly addresses national health system reform. Member States receiving financial assistance are required to implement ...detailed reforms stipulated in ‘Memorandums of Understanding’ (MoUs). But the health systems in other (non-MoU) countries are also scrutinised in the context of the ‘European Semester’: through this annual policy cycle, the EU has continuously strengthened the tools it uses to enforce compliance. This article aims to open the black box of the EU’s economic surveillance of national healthcare systems by outlining the complex policy architecture of the EU’s newly acquired role in this area. The story of how health has emerged on the European agenda illustrates how the Eurozone crisis created a policy ‘window of opportunity’ to push through fiscal surveillance of health systems as part of the solution to the crisis. The cognitive frameworks put forward by certain elites added up to the primacy of an economic perspective over health objectives. Finally, our analysis of the role of the actors involved in the elaboration of EU guidance in the field of health points to the dominance of ‘economic’ actors and relative absence of ‘health’ actors, in spite of increased attempts by the latter to gain influence.
Given the mounting importance of self-employment on the political and policy agenda on a national and EU level, this article sheds light on the under- researched area of social protection for these ...workers. It focuses on their statutory access to social protection schemes in 35 European countries. We classify social protection systems into three categories based on the access they provide to insurance-based schemes for the self-employed. Crucially, we discuss the link between statutory access to social protection for these workers and typologies of welfare regimes and show that it tends to follow the main institutional patterns of these.
This article analyses the effects of the European Social Fund (ESF) on domestic activation policies in the three Belgian regions: Flanders, Wallonia and Brussels. We argue that over the last decade ...the ESF has had a catalytic impact, first on the innovation of activation instruments, second on the governance of employment policies and third on policy framing. We explain how three different mechanisms (leverage, conditionality and learning) generate these effects and how they can account for a differential influence in different regions. We conclude by summarizing our research findings and framework, suggesting its usefulness for analyzing other domestic settings and European policy instruments.
This article investigates variations in the domestic impact of the European Union's largest financial instrument, the European Social Fund (ESF), in The Netherlands and Spain. We find that, despite ...the large differences between the two countries examined in terms of 'goodness of fit', the ESF had significant effects on both The Netherlands and Spain. These effects, however, occurred through rather different dynamics: intermediate variables such as leverage, learning and aid conditionality determine how the ESF actually 'hits home', in addition to the degree of institutional, political and policy (mis)fit. At the same time, we qualify our analysis by exploring the role of countries' past experiences with the ESF, their problem load, the availability of (European Union and domestic) resources and member states' uploading capacities. The 'goodness of fit' literature has suggested that these factors may be important, but they have not yet been sufficiently explored for the ESF.
Tackling pensions' problems means engaging with what Pierson (2001) has called 'immovable objects'. Additionally, the EU competence for drafting specific legislation in this area remains unfulfilled ...potential, while EU legislation in other policy areas creates indirect pressures on national pension policies. Under such circumstances it seems that the room for an effective European intervention in the domain is limited, especially for 'soft' modes of governance such as the Open Method of Coordination on Social Protection and Social Inclusion (SPSI). The pension's strand of the SPSI OMC is often referred to in academic writings as a bureaucratic nightmare which only involves experts and technocrats, even if some cognitive effects have been acknowledged. I take issue against the view of the OMC as mere window dressing. This chapter argues that OMC is 'effective' in that it provides opportunities to create policy windows of opportunity which EU and national policymakers use in their efforts to discuss, manage and reform pension systems. Building on John Kingdon's (1995) theoretical framework and applying it to both the EU level and the (most likely) case of Belgium, I conclude that the pension OMC influences, against the odds, three core streams of the policy formation process. First, OMC influences the acceptance of compelling problems so that decision makers pay serious attention to them; secondly, OMC brings about changes in the political stream; and thirdly OMC makes certain ideas 'take hold and grow', so that they matter (more) in the policy soup. The core mechanisms through which OMC operates are puzzling, through deliberate learning and de facto socialization, and powering, through usage of the OMC architecture and peer pressure as a result of comparisons with others.
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