Within the framework of the new European economic governance, neoliberal views on wages have further increased in prominence and have steered various reforms of collective bargaining rules and practices. As the crisis in Europe came to be largely interpreted as a crisis of competitiveness, wages were seen as the core adjustment variable for ‘internal devaluation’, the claim being that competitiveness could be restored through a reduction of labour costs. This book proposes an alternative view according to which wage developments need to be strengthened through a Europe-wide coordinated reconstruction of collective bargaining as a precondition for more sustainable and more inclusive growth in Europe. It contains major research findings from the CAWIE2 – Collectively Agreed Wages in Europe – project, conducted in 2014–2015 for the purpose of discussing and debating the currently dominant policy perspectives on collectively-bargained wage systems under the new European economic governance.

A critical analysis of the legal dimension of European Union economic governance.

This book is the first to be dedicated entirely to the European Semester -- a new framework for policy coordination across European Union (EU) member states. The Semester represents a major advancement in EU governance. Created in 2010 in the wake of the financial and sovereign debt crises and revamped in 2015, it was intended to provide a new socio-economic governance architecture to coordinate national policies without transferring legal sovereignty to EU level. The papers in this collection are written by authors who have already contributed to this literature and have conducted original research for their studies. The book offers an empirical and theoretical assessment of the European Semester, examining its implications along three critical axes, running respectively between the economic and the social, the supranational and the intergovernmental, and the technocratic and democratic poles of EU governance. The book concludes that the European Semester challenges established theoretical understandings of EU governance, as it is a prime example of the complexity that supersedes simple polar oppositions. The chapters were originally published in a special issue of the Journal of European Public Policy.

The global economic and financial crisis that started in 2007 exposed serious flaws in the euro's original design. This report examines why Europe's economic and monetary union was so badly affected by the crisis, and assesses whether further changes need to be made to the structure of economic governance that underpins it. A Chatham House, Elcano and AREL Report

For many observers, the European Union is mired in a deep crisis. Between sluggish growth; political turmoil following a decade of austerity politics; Brexit; and the rise of Asian influence, the EU is seen as a declining power on the world stage. Columbia Law professor Anu Bradford argues the opposite in her important new book The Brussels Effect: the EU remains an influential superpower that shapes the world in its image. By promulgating regulations that shape the international business environment, elevating standards worldwide, and leading to a notable Europeanization of many important aspects of global commerce, the EU has managed to shape policy in areas such as data privacy, consumer health and safety, environmental protection, antitrust, and online hate speech. And in contrast to how superpowers wield their global influence, the Brussels Effect - a phrase first coined by Bradford in 2012- absolves the EU from playing a direct role in imposing standards, as market forces alone are often sufficient as multinational companies voluntarily extend the EU rule to govern their global operations. The Brussels Effect shows how the EU has acquired such power, why multinational companies use EU standards as global standards, and why the EU's role as the world's regulator is likely to outlive its gradual economic decline, extending the EU's influence long into the future.

This book investigates to what extent and how the European Semester impacts on national employment policy in four EU member states of the Central and Eastern European (CEE) region. Using an original theoretical and methodological framework, and based on empirical evidence from extensive interviews with experts in the field, this book examines the relation between EU preferences, exemplified by the yearly list of country-specific recommendations, and national policy responses to EU suggestions, tracing the extent to which policy change can be attributed to the influence of the European Semester. It extracts three potential mechanisms of European Semester influence on policy change: External pressure, mutual learning and creative appropriation and identifies key contributing and inhibiting factors. The book provides several policy recommendations regarding the organisation and workings of the European Semester process. This text will be of key interest to students, academics and practitioners in European and EU politics, EU socio-economic governance, EU social policy, European integration, soft Europeanization and the Europeanization of Central and Eastern Europe.

Based on the research of the EU-6th framework funded research consortium on 'New Modes of Governance in the European Union', this volume explores the roots, execution and applications of new forms of governance and evaluates their success.