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In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, EU Member States managed to agree on key financial instruments to support the economic recovery of Europe. The decision to manage these instruments within the existing European Semester procedure has put this procedure into the spotlight. Adequate parliamentary involvement in this procedure is crucial. The pandemic can serve as […] The post Democratizing the European Semester: the involvement of national parliaments appeared first on Post-Crisis Democracy in Europe.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
In: Maatsch, Aleksandra orcid:0000-0002-0408-2176 (2017). Effectiveness of the European Semester: Explaining Domestic Consent and Contestation. Parliam. Aff., 70 (4). S. 691 - 710. OXFORD: OXFORD UNIV PRESS. ISSN 1460-2482
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.
Recently, a well-known publisher Routledge from London published a book about to that topic under the title The European Semester and National Employment Policies (European semester and national policies of employment) written by Mario Munta from the Faculty of Political Sciences in Zagreb.
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.
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.
Once it was introduced as an instrument for deepening European integration, the legitimacy, opportunity and utility of European Semester were repeatedly questioned from the perspective of its contribution to the institutionalization of European governance. Also, there is a strong and direct link between the further deepening of the European Union's political and economic integration on the one hand, and the development of a culture of evaluating policies and programs on the other. Taking these aspects into account, the following questions arise: does the European Commission have, in its position as manager of the European Semester, a real capacity of evaluating all aspects regarding the deepening of European integration? Can the European Semester be a means for diffusing evaluation practice at the level of Member States? This is why, in this paper, we propose to give answers to these questions.
The European Semester is a new institutional process that provides EU member states with ex-ante guidance on fiscal and structural objectives. The Semester's goals are ambitious and it is still uncertain how it will fit into the new EU economic governance framework. We find that member states are only slowly internalising the new procedure. Furthermore, the Semester has so far lacked legitimacy due to the minor role assigned to the European Parliament, the marginal involvement of national parliaments and the lack of transparency of the process at some stages. Finally, there remains room to clarify the implications from a unified legal text. In fact, diluting the legal separation of recommendations on National Reform Programmes and Council opinions on Stability and Convergence Programmes may compromise effective surveillance and governance. The European Parliament has an important role to play. It needs hold the Commission and the Council accountable. This and the overall objective of enhancing the new procedure's effectiveness and legitimacy can be done by means of a regular Economic Dialogue on the Semester.
Pensions at the European level have been, since the sovereign debt crisis, affected by several decision-making innovations. Retirement policy has been embedded in the European Semester, which strengthened the hitherto inadequate European socioeconomic policy coordination mechanisms. Given that the additional powers bestowed upon the Commission were qualified, a supranational response followed. With the effect of strengthening its rational-legal authority, in line with neo-functionalist spillover assumptions, evidence-based standards have been progressively applied to EU retirement policy formation. This innovative turn warrants the employment of a policy analysis theoretical framework. In particular, the article applies the concepts underpinning policy evaluation to the study of pensions within the Semester. Using a mixed-methods approach, which combines case study with statistical analysis, and following a novel in-depth coding of country-specific recommendations and Country Reports, this article argues that member states' pensions are now assessed within a structured, formal and polycentric evaluation cycle. This has been gradually constructed by increasing the coherence between the yearly interim ex post evaluations of pension policy output (the Country Reports) and the final ex post evaluations of pension policy outcomes (the Ageing and Pension Adequacy Reports) that are published every 3 years. The result is a streamlined, technocratic, knowledge-based approach to retirement policy at the supranational level. Even though the generation of technical knowledge is no substitute for toothless conditionality, greater reliance on evidence is aimed at socializing national decision-makers and may eventually influence their policy choices. The unconventional pension evaluation cycle that sprung up around the Semester may, hence, serve as a model applicable to other socioeconomic policy domains.