In the context of increasing globalization, global competition and rapid change the EU sees innovation and its commercialization as an effective way to build long-term global competitive advantage. Innovation policy is a link between research and technological development policy and industrial...

The economic and financial crisis 2007/08 revealed profound weaknesses of the economic and financial governance framework of the European Union (EU), amongst them the insufficient coordination of EU policies in the field of economic policy. In 2011, EU member states created the European Semester...

Do parliamentary parties politicize compliance within the European Semester? If so, which conflict lines organize parliamentary debates? In order to address these questions, this discussion paper analyses national parliamentary participation in two budgetary cycles of the European Semester (2014...

The economic policy of the European Union influences the almost 23 million small and medium-sized companies in the 28 Member States in a variety of ways. Yet, there exists no coherent EU policy on small and medium-sized enterprises. With the Small Business Act of 2008, small and medium-sized...

Should we explain the disappointing outcomes of the Open Method of Co-ordination on Inclusion by methodological weaknesses or by substantive contradictions in the ‘social investment' paradigm? To clarify the underlying concepts, we first revisit the original ‘Lisbon inspiration', and...