Thursday, April 14, 2016
Symphony Ballroom (DoubleTree by Hilton Philadelphia Center City)
The European Semester is a central component of the Economic and Monetary Union’s response to the 2010 Eurozone crisis. This new annual policy cycle establishes a mode of governance involving all of the EU’s main decision-making bodies as well as the national governments. Over five iterations since its inception, this policy cycle has undergone significant adjustments aimed to strengthen its input/output/throughput legitimacy. As a consequence, it has come to reshape the roles, attributions and relations between institutions. Drawing on process tracing, content analysis and elite interviews, this analysis opens the black box of the European Semester to examine its institutional genesis and transformation over time. We argue that, empirically, distinction should be made between the fast-burning phase of the Eurozone crisis (2010-2012) and its slow burning phase (ongoing since 2012). The features the European Semester between 2010 and 2012 have changed both in terms of power relations and ideas for policy. Theoretically, two mechanisms of change can provide convincing explanations. Primo, change in the power relation between actors is to be explained by changes in the values/subjective beliefs of EU institutional actors. Secundo, Member States have come to empower the EP and the Commission, and this despite the fact that at first glance, these seemed reduced to a subordinated role by prevailing intergovernmental logics. Ultimately, the Commission has managed to strengthen its role within the European Semester, by leveraging its often underestimated capacity to monitor, assess and provide recommendations to Member States.
