Suchergebnisse

This dissertation asks three interrelated questions about economic policy coordination: (1) Why do we see persistent macroeconomic imbalances that make international coordination necessary? (2) What kind of economic policies does the European Union promote in its member states via its coordination framework, the European Semester? (3) What determines whether governments implement recommendations issued under the Semester? The first paper argues that economic ideas, and their emphasis in media reporting, help secure public support for policies that result in external imbalances. It finds that the dominant interpretations of current account balances in Australia and Germany concur with distinct perspectives: external surpluses are seen as evidence of competitiveness in Germany, while external deficits are interpreted as evidence of attractiveness for investments in Australia. Survey experiments in both countries suggest that exposure to these diverging interpretations of the current account has a causal effect on citizens' support for their country's economic strategy. The second and third papers analyse policy recommendations under the European Semester, arguably the most ambitious example of economic policy coordination worldwide. The findings show that the European Union does not use the Semester to promote a single economic model across all member states. Recommendations do not uniformly recommend more reliance on the market or the state. Rather, they tend to suggest fiscal restraint and less protection for labour market insiders, while simultaneously promoting measures that benefit vulnerable groups in society. During the second decade of EMU, recommendations have gradually become more favourable of state intervention. The fourth paper investigates possible reasons for (non-)compliance with the Semester. It argues that recommendations are more likely to be implemented when their policy direction is in line with national governments' economic ideology. The analysis shows that recommendations advocating less ...

The focus of this article is on EU social policy-making since 2010 in the context of new governance arrangements and changing policy orientations and politics under the European Semester and Europe 2020. Analysis of these developments can tell us something very important about the consensus around social policy in the EU, and in the member states more broadly, given the potentially important role to be played by social policy in adjusting to the financial crisis. The last five years have been especially momentous in an EU context. The European Semester was introduced in 2011, inaugurating a significant new annual governance cycle to monitor and enforce compliance with stringent budgetary and structural reforms (European Commission, 2010). A key part of the Semester - and the strongest mechanism available to the EU institutions to influence social policy developments at member state level - is the issuing of Country Specific Recommendations (CSRs) to member states in areas of perceived weakness. Europe 2020, the ten-year programme of economic, employment and social policy goals and priorities of the EU, introduced ten integrated guidelines to be taken forward by five headline targets and seven flagship initiatives. Social policy has an explicit place in Europe 2020, especially in terms of poverty and social inclusion, employment, pensions, health and social care. For example, one of the five targets aims to lift some 20 million people out of poverty and social exclusion by 2020.

We study whether and to what extent EU countries implement recommendations on macroeconomic imbalances given by the EU in the so-called European Semester. We assess how recommendations have evolved since 2013, based on a new database. We also study how EU recommendations on addressing macroeconomic imbalances compare to recommendations given by the International Monetary Fund. Overall implementation of recommendations by EU countries has worsened in the last few years, in particular when it comes to recommendations addressed to countries with excessive macroeconomic imbalances. The policy content of the recommendations is broadly aligned with economic priorities emphasised by their corresponding legal bases, but to our surprise a sizable share of recommendations, such as on childcare, are also labelled as relevant for resolving macroeconomic imbalances. Moreover, for countries with macroeconomic imbalances, the IMF tends to emphasise financial imbalances more frequently than the EU. We also note that the EU makes significant political choices about which imbalances are judged to be excessive and which are judged not excessive. Low implementation is likely a result of the fundamental dilemma facing the EU. National policies have major cross-border implications making coordination important, but countries take sovereign decisions mostly based on national considerations. We therefore argue that recommendations given in the context of macroeconomic imbalances should be focused on key issues of macroeconomic and cross-border relevance. Moreover, we note a significant gap between analyses as described in the recitals of recommendations and the actual recommendations, and would urge greater consistency. Finally, the European Semester exercise is very difficult to digest and communication of key analyses and recommendations could be significantly improved to make them more accessible to national policymakers.

The purpose of this note is to present economic governance in the European Union, its 2017 cycle and its main tools for the coordination of economic and fiscal policies of the 28 member states through a list of parallel procedures and processes.

This article discusses the impact that the reforms of the European Union's economic governance since 2011 have had on the European Commission's role as a policy entrepreneur. Particular attention is paid to mechanisms that are applied by the Commission to extend its scope beyond its given formal competences to shape national reform agendas. The research interest is based on the assumption that the Commission is a 'competence-maximising rational actor' (Pollack, 1997), whose primary organisational goals are to expand the scope of Community competence and increase the Commission's own standing within the policy process. Accordingly, this research contributes to the scholarly debate by identifying mechanisms applied by the Commission under the European Semester to shape European and national reform agendas in areas of sovereign policymaking competences of the member states.

Artículo de revista ; The Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF), the centrepiece of the Next Generation EU (NGEU) instrument, has become the European Union (EU) economic policy coordination priority. This has made it necessary to temporarily simplify the European Semester. To gain access to the RRF, the Member States (MSs) have to set out the investments and reforms to which the funds will be assigned in their national recovery and resilience plans (RRPs) and which must be aimed fundamentally at responding to climate change-related challenges, digitalisation, the strengthening of human capital and public sector efficiency. The assessment of these plans by the European Commission (EC) will be central to the EU annual economic policy coordination cycle within the European Semester, which retains the habitual Excessive Deficit and Macroeconomic Imbalance procedures.

The European Semester became an essential part of the revised governance architecture of the Europe 2020 reform strategy for the Single European Market under the conditions of the global financial crisis and the emerging eurozone crisis a decade ago. The article examines to what extent the European Semester offers channels to establish throughput legitimacy by granting national parliaments the ability to effectively scrutinise executive decision-making in the annual policy cycle. Poland is chosen as the case study for parliamentary scrutiny of the EU's system of multi-level governance in the East-Central European region. The analysis adopts a liberal intergovernmentalist two-level approach. On the domestic level it concentrates on the involvement of the Sejm, the lower house of parliament, on the drafting of the Polish National Reform Plans for the annual Semester policy cycle between 2015 and 2020. The basis for the analysis are official transcripts from the plenary debates in the relevant committees, the European Affairs Committee and the Public Finance and the Economic Committee. The Polish case study illustrates that the European Semester represents a predominantly elite-driven process of policy coordination, which is strongly geared towards EU-level executive bargaining processes between national governments and the European Commission at the expense of domestic parliamentary scrutiny.

Do parliamentary parties politicize compliance within the European Semester? If so, which conflict lines organize parliamentary debates? In order to address these questions, this discussion paper analyses national parliamentary participation in two budgetary cycles of the European Semester (2014 and 2015) in Austria, France, Germany, and Ireland. While in France and Germany, compliance within the European Semester has been subject to strong politicization, this has not been the case in Austria and Ireland. Moreover, strong politicization coincided with the contestation of country-specific recommendations among the parliamentary parties. The empirical analysis established that strong formal powers in budgetary matters constitute an important prerequisite allowing parliamentary parties to articulate their contestation. However, the willingness to comply depends most directly on whether the content of country-specific recommendations is coherent with the economic preferences of a political party, not the government-opposition cleavage. ; Wird compliance im Rahmen des Europäischen Semesters durch nationale Parteien politisiert? Falls ja, entlang welcher Konfliktlinien orientieren sich parlamentarische Debatten? Um diese Fragen anzugehen, analysiert dieser Artikel die Beteiligung nationaler Parlamente in zwei Budgetzyklen des Europäischen Semesters (2014 und 2015) in Österreich, Deutschland, Frankreich und Irland. Während in Deutschland und Frankreich compliance im Rahmen des Europäischen Semesters verstärkt Gegenstand von Politisierung war, trifft dies in Irland und Österreich nicht zu. Darüber hinaus wurden in den Fällen mit starker Politisierung verstärkt auch Anfechtungen der länderspezifischen Empfehlungen durch die parlamentarischen Parteien festgestellt. Die empirische Analyse zeigt, dass starke formale Befugnisse in Budgetangelegenheiten eine wichtige Voraussetzung für Parlamente darstellen, länderspezifische Empfehlungen anzufechten. Allerdings hängt die Bereitschaft, den länderspezifischen Empfehlungen zu folgen, in großem Ausmaß davon ab, ob diese inhaltlich mit der zugrunde liegenden ökonomischen Haltung der Partei übereinstimmt und nicht von der Kluft zwischen Regierung und Opposition.

This article conceptualises and illustrates hardening and softening trends in country-specific recommendations (CSRs) that are part of the European Semester. It proposes an analytical framework that meets the specific characteristics of CSRs: its adaptable and non-uniform norms, which are co-determined by actors operating across governance levels. It proposes three elements to analyse hardening and softening of CSRs, adding the degree of 'centralisation' to the often used elements of 'obligation' and 'enforcement'. Then it illustrates the framework with trends in CSRs given to Belgium and the Netherlands on pensions and wages. Both countries and topics show hardening as well as softening trends regarding the degree of obligation, enforcement and centralisation. The article suggests that a complete analysis of hardening and softening of CSRs requires assessing the degree of centralisation as well. Looking at obligation and enforcement alone could misinterpret the hardness or softness of CSRs.

Which factors explain domestic consent or contestation of European Union (EU) policy guidance issued within the framework of the European Semester (ES)? To address this question, this article analyses national parliamentary party positions on EU policy guidance in two cycles of the ES (2014 and 2015) in Austria, France, Germany and Ireland. Whereas parliamentary parties in Austria and Ireland expressed their consent to EU policy guidance, parliamentary parties in Germany and France were polarised. The empirical analysis presented in this article establishes that strong formal powers in budgetary matters are a prerequisite for parties to contest EU policy guidance. However, parliamentary party positions depend most on whether the content of EU policy guidance reflects a party's economic interests.

The July 2013 European Council recommendations to the euro area recognise a number of fiscal and macrostructural challenges, but do not fully exploit the options made possible by the European economic governance framework. There are particular problems with the Council's suggestions for the euro area as whole, which are not (or not adequately) reflected by the country-specific recommendations. A major drawback is that the Council recommendations do not give sufficient importance to symmetric intra-euro area adjustments. Reference to the euro area's 'aggregate fiscal stance' is empty rhetoric. Insufficient attention is paid to demand management.The most comprehensive recommendations are made on structural reforms. The July/August 2013 Article IV IMF recommendations on macroeconomic policies could also have been more ambitious, but they correspond better to the economic situation of the euro area than the Council's recommendations. The President of the Eurogroup should continue discussions on the completion of the economic governance framework, including completion of the banking union and the setting-up of a euro-area institution responsible for managing the euro area's aggregate fiscal stance.

There is a great discrepancy between the omnipresent demands for inclusion published by official bodies and ministries and the actual participation of people with disabilities in social life. The policy cultivates the rhetoric of inclusion in programmatic and conceptual formulations, while at the same time maintaining or even expanding separative institutions for those that are considered not to be eligible for inclusion in the fields of education and employment (see competence centres in education and 'inclusion' in sheltered workshops, or the persistent exclusion of persons under guardianship from the right to vote). Inclusion is viewed primarily from an economic and neo-liberal perspective, without questioning the basic principles of a meritocratic society oriented towards proven performance. Performance appraisals, especially in the area of education and work, are largely based on the performance demanded and shown without sufficiently taking into account the way the performance is achieved. In the educational sector, the incompatibility of introducing educational standards and achieving full inclusion is not recognised. Separating establishments are renamed to inclusive settings without any fundamental reorientation. The former regional special schools for pupils with cognitive impairments were re-branded as competence centres for intellectual development. With the introduction of the competence centres, no longer official figures are published regarding pupils who are taught separately. There are also no official figures on how many pupils were assigned to the competence centres from regular schools and vice versa. It is therefore impossible to give comparative statistical evidence of the extent to which inclusive education has currently developed in Luxembourg. With regard to employment, the same problems remain as those already identified in the first Action Plan. People with disabilities experience considerable difficulty in finding a job in the mainstream labour market. Unemployment is disproportionately high among people with disabilities and lasts much longer than among job seekers without disabilities. People with disabilities are increasingly oriented towards working in a sheltered workshop under the national guidelines of the Employment Agency. The employment quotas for people with disabilities, which are legally mandated, are largely not met and are not monitored or imposed by the state. Also, some social problems already addressed in the first Action Plan have still not been tackled, such as the legal incapacity of people under guardianship. People with disabilities under guardianship are extensively excluded from self-determination and political participation. They may not vote nor may they run as candidates. As a result, almost 10 years after the introduction of the UN-CRPD no improvement has been made in this area. Furthermore, there are still problems in the implementation of the accessibility of buildings and infrastructure for public use.

This paper studies the conceptualization and quantification of 'competitiveness' within the main policy coordination framework of the EU, the European Semester. This topic warrants attention since 'competitiveness' is not only of central importance in the European policy discourse, but also a theoretically ambiguous and malleable concept with conflicting accentuations, all of which are subject of considerable academic and political debate. By investigating the translation of competition as a contested theoretical concept into concrete indicators within a legally binding document, the paper produces three main insights that deserve further attention, both scientifically and politically. First, the indicators of the semester mainly measure cost rather than technological competitiveness, indicating a constriction of the concept at the operational level. Second, while EU policy documents regularly stress the competitiveness of the European Union as a whole, the indicators in the semester measure individual country competitiveness. Finally, the indicators in the Semester measure how the competitiveness of single Member States changes over time, not how they perform relative to others. This shallows the heterogeneity of countries, which is problematic given recent findings according to which absolute differentials of competitiveness across Member States is one important driver of accelerating polarization patterns in the Union.

This paper studies the conceptualization and quantification of 'competitiveness' within the main policy coordination framework of the EU, the European Semester. This topic warrants attention since 'competitiveness' is not only of central importance in the European policy discourse, but also a theoretically ambiguous and malleable concept with conflicting accentuations, all of which are subject of considerable academic and political debate. By investigating the translation of competition as a contested theoretical concept into concrete indicators within a legally binding document, the paper produces three main insights that deserve further attention, both scientifically and politically. First, the indicators of the semester mainly measure cost rather than technological competitiveness, indicating a constriction of the concept at the operational level. Second, while EU policy documents regularly stress the competitiveness of the European Union as a whole, the indicators in the semester measure individual country competitiveness. Finally, the indicators in the Semester measure how the competitiveness of single Member States changes over time, not how they perform relative to others. This shallows the heterogeneity of countries, which is problematic given recent findings according to which absolute differentials of competitiveness across Member States is one important driver of accelerating polarization patterns in the Union.

The European Semester is an EU procedure, designed to facilitate coordination between national and EU actors in planning and implementing economic and fiscal policies and contribute to sustained economic convergence and employment in the EU. Scholars have highlighted this procedure as a crucial area of EU politics for national parliaments since its introduction in 2011. However, national parliaments participate differently in the European Semester. This article investigates which factors (institutional, political, economic) are more likely to intensify parliamentary engagement at the national stage of the procedure, based on a comparative quantitative analysis of parliamentary scrutiny activities across 35 parliaments/chambers in the EU over the 2014–2017 period. The article offers new insights about prospects for greater parliamentary accountability in the European Semester in practice.