Socializing the European Semester? EU Economic Governance and Social Policy Coordination Since the Crisis

This paper analyzes how EU social objectives and policy coordination have been integrated into the Union’s emerging post-crisis architecture of economic governance.  Based on extensive interviews with high-level policy makers as well as analysis of published and unpublished documents, the paper argues that between 2011 and 2014, there was a progressive ‘socialization’ of the ‘European Semester’ of policy coordination, in terms of an increasing emphasis on social objectives and targets in the EU’s priorities and country-specific recommendations; an intensification of social monitoring, multilateral surveillance, and peer review; and an enhanced role for social and employment actors, especially the EU Employment and Social Protection Committees (EMCO and SPC). The paper interprets these developments not only as a response by the Commission and other EU institutions to rising social and political discontent among European citizens with the consequences of post-crisis austerity policies, but also as a product of reflexive learning and creative adaptation by social and employment actors to the new institutional conditions of the European Semester: another form of ‘socialization’. The final section of the paper will analyze recent developments under the Juncker Commission, assessing how far and in what ways these may represent a significant shift in substantive content and governance procedures, together with the longer-term implications of the proposals advanced in the ‘Five Presidents’ Report’ (2015) for a ‘deeper and more integrated’ European Semester.