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AbstractCountry‐specific recommendations (CSRs) were introduced by the Stability and Growth Pact and offered guidance to countries in fiscal policies. Coordination was very limited and unsystematic in terms of policies and obligations. In the aftermath of the euro area financial crisis, the European Union reinforces the pre‐existing policy cycle with the European Semester. Why do countries implement CSRs? Are there explanatory differences in their implementation before and after the introduction of the European Semester? We argue that the study of the entire history of the CSRs provides a unique chance to unravel opposite causal mechanisms. Employing an original dataset, we show that, in the first period, electoral proximity reduces implementation. We find also that, if a country is in (out of) the euro area, it is more (less) inclined to adhere to the CSRs as inflation increases. In the European Semester, instead, inflationary pressure and higher costs of enforcement increase implementation.

In the framework of "Europe 2020", European Union Member States are subject to a new system of economic monitoring and governance known as the European Semester. This paper seeks to analyse the way in which national health systems are being influenced by EU institutions through the European Semester. A content analysis of the Country specific Recommendations (CSRs)for the years 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014 was carried out. This confirmed an increasing trend for health systems to feature in CSRs which tend to be framed in the discourse on sustainability of public finances rather than that of social inclusion with a predominant focus on the policy objective of sustainability. The likelihood of obtaining a health CSRs was tested against a series of financial health system performance indicators and general government finance indicators. The odds ratio of obtaining a health CSR increased slightly with the increase in level of general Government debt, with an OR 1.02 (CI: 1.01, 1.03; p = 0.007) and decreased with an increased public health expenditure/total health expenditure ratio, with an OR 0.89 (CI: 0.84, 0.96; p = 0.001). The European Semester process is a relatively new process that is influencing health systems in the European Union. The effect of this process on health systems merits further attention. Health stakeholders should seek to engage more closely with this process which if steered appropriately could also present opportunities for health system reform. ; peer-reviewed

A year into its existence, the Recovery and Resilience Facility finds itself closely wed to the European Semester. It is a difficult marriage, but it is a marriage made to last. Any debate on the future of the Semester will take place against the backdrop of the RRF experience. And any future fiscal capacity at the EU level will not come without a Semester-style reform leg. It is therefore crucial to make this marriage work. In this policy brief, Nils Redeker and Thu Nguyen argue that this requires three things: 1) scaling back recommendations under the regular Semester, 2) balancing out the asymmetric powers that the Commission now has over different member states, and 3) striking the right balance between flexibility and enforcement of agreed plans.

The European Semester is an information-driven surveillance system that relies upon budgetary and economic statistics collected from the European Union's member states and analyzed by the European Commission. This is true for both the Excessive Deficit Procedure (EDP) and the Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure (MIP). This article employs Principal–Agent theory to analyze the politics of asymmetric information in the EDP and MIP. The study explores how the statistical requirements of the Six-Pack have been enforced by the Commission and the Economic and Financial Affairs Council to strengthen the EDP, even as the statistical integrity of the MIP received less protection. The article examines how the misrepresentation of statistics by Spain's Autonomous Community of Valencia provoked the first financial sanction in the history of Economic and Monetary Union, as well as the Commission's unsuccessful efforts to strengthen the reliability of MIP statistics.

Review of the book from Mario Munta, EU Socio-economic Governance in Central and Eastern Europe: The European Semester and National Employment Policies, Routledge, 2021, 261 pp. ; Recensión del libro de Mario Munta, EU Socio-economic Governance in Central and Eastern Europe: The European Semester and National Employment Policies, Routledge, 2021, 261 pp.

AbstractThis article provides new perspectives on the persistent hierarchy between 'social' and 'economic' goals in European Union's (EU) economic governance. We operationalize insights from feminist economics and political economy to analyse the agenda‐setting documents of the European Semester – the Annual Growth Surveys (AGS) – showing how the much‐debated integration of social goals into the European Semester is fundamentally constrained by mainstream economic epistemologies. These epistemologies misrepresent interrelationships between the productive economy and the reproductive labour needed to maintain it. Using interpretive policy analysis, we show how multiple concepts and measurements used to conceptualize policy goals and impacts within the AGSs, coalesce to systematically misrepresent reproductive labour as a 'social' activity, an irrelevance, or a cost, rather than a macroeconomic input. This restricts the possibilities of enhancing the social dimension of the European Semester, in ways conspicuously ignored by the existing literature, which are of heightened salience in the wake of Covid‐19.

This article provides new perspectives on the persistent hierarchy between 'social' and 'economic' goals in European Union's (EU) economic governance. We operationalize insights from feminist economics and political economy to analyse the agenda-setting documents of the European Semester – the Annual Growth Surveys (AGS) – showing how the much-debated integration of social goals into the European Semester is fundamentally constrained by mainstream economic epistemologies. These epistemologies misrepresent interrelationships between the productive economy and the reproductive labour needed to maintain it. Using interpretive policy analysis, we show how multiple concepts and measurements used to conceptualize policy goals and impacts within the AGSs, coalesce to systematically misrepresent reproductive labour as a 'social' activity, an irrelevance, or a cost, rather than a macroeconomic input. This restricts the possibilities of enhancing the social dimension of the European Semester, in ways conspicuously ignored by the existing literature, which are of heightened salience in the wake of Covid-19. ; publishedVersion ; Peer reviewed