Recent Changes in EU Economic Governance: Methodological and Institutional Dynamics

Abstract

A decade after the outbreak of the Euro crisis, enough time has passed to assess its impact on EU economic governance. This Special Issue aims to identify the institutional dynamics that have occurred since the crisis by using methodological approaches that reflect the rising complexity of decisionmaking under Economic and Monetary Union. The ambition of the contributing authors is to provide new theoretical insights and empirical findings and thereby to contribute to our understanding of the long-term ramifications of the Euro crisis for EU economic governance. This Special Issue addresses two broad research areas: power relations, institutional dynamics and decision-making practices, and the processes, efficacy and effectiveness of fiscal and economic policy coordination in the reformed setting of economic governance.

The EU’s Recovery and Resilience Facility: A Next Phase in EU Socioeconomic Governance?

“…During the first decade of its existence, the Semester sparked quite fierce debates on legitimacy, national autonomy, effectiveness, and the domination of economic over social goals (Chang et al, 2019;Copeland & Daly, 2015;Crum & Merlo, 2020;De la Porte & Heins, 2015;Vanheuverzwijn & Crespy, 2018;Verdun & Zeitlin, 2018;Woźniakowski et al, 2021). Moreover, quite a number of countries, those in dire need of financial support, were taken out of the Semester coordination activities and placed in even stricter programmes.…”

Hardening and softening of country-specific recommendations in the European Semester

“…Consequently, CSRs may change from year to year and may differ from country to country. While national governments might experience higher or lower degrees of pressure to implement reforms along the lines of the CSRs (Chang et al 2019;Vanheuverzwijn and Crespy 2018), the Semester is neither a centralised form of hierarchical steering nor a purely intergovernmental exercise. The Semester oscillates somewhere in between (Verdun and Zeitlin 2018).…”