The Council’s Amendments to the Country-Specific Recommendations: More than just Cosmetics?

Tkalec, Igor

doi:10.30950/jcer.v15i2.1001

Cited by 5 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 20 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The limits of supranational authority were felt at multiple levels and stages of decision-making. At the EU level, while many of the CSRs issued by the Commission were based on technocratic criteria (Guidi and Guardiancich, 2018), the Council at times introduced more than cosmetic changes (Tkalec, 2019). A good example is the Commission’s recommendation to automatically link retirement age to life expectancy that has been systematically watered down by the member states.…”

Section: Limits and Opportunities Of The European Semestermentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond the European Semester: The supranational evaluation cycle for pensions

Guardiancich

Guidi

Terlizzi

2022

Journal of European Social Policy

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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.

show abstract

Section: Limits and Opportunities Of The European Semestermentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond the European Semester: The supranational evaluation cycle for pensions

Guardiancich

Guidi

Terlizzi

2022

Journal of European Social Policy

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Based on the economic situation in the EU and the member states, the EU annually issues CSRs, which cover a wide range of policy fields, including fiscal governance, financial markets, employment, competition, public administration, and social policy. CSRs are proposed by the Commission and adopted by the Council, sometimes after rephrasing or even substantially altering them (Tkalec 2019). Without further transferring sovereignty to the EU level, the Semester gives the EU institutions a more authoritative role to influence the economic and social policies of member states (Verdun and Zeitlin 2018, 138).…”

Section: Economic Governance Since the Introduction Of The European Semestermentioning

confidence: 99%

Economic and fiscal policy coordination after the crisis: is the European Semester promoting more or less state intervention?

Haas

D’Erman

Schulz

et al. 2020

Journal of European Integration

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The European Union (EU)and its Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) in particularis often criticized as a predominantly marketoriented project. We analyse to what extent such claims can be substantiated by focusing on one key aspect of the EU's post-crisis framework for economic governance: the country-specific recommendations (CSRs) that the EU has been issuing annually since 2011. Based on an original dataset, we analyse more than 1300 CSRs, which show that the EU does not push uniformly for less state intervention. Rather, the CSRs 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, CSRs have gradually become more permissive of higher public spending and more in favour of worker protection, while the share of recommendations advocating more social protection has stagnated at a high level.

show abstract

Economic and Monetary Union

2024

European Union Law

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The Council’s Amendments to the Country-Specific Recommendations: More than just Cosmetics?

Cited by 5 publications

References 20 publications

Beyond the European Semester: The supranational evaluation cycle for pensions

Beyond the European Semester: The supranational evaluation cycle for pensions

Economic and fiscal policy coordination after the crisis: is the European Semester promoting more or less state intervention?

Economic and Monetary Union

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About