This paper analyzes how EU social objectives and policy coordination have been integrated into the Europe 2020 Strategy and the Union’s emerging post-crisis architecture of economic governance. Based on published and unpublished documents as well as interviews with high-level policy makers,...

The implementation record of the Country Specific Recommendations (CSRs) has declined over time, as financial turbulence lessened and the economic outlook started to improve. Urgency for reforms seemingly receded to leave room to request member states to move towards more accommodative stances....

The paper examines the impact of the European Semester on the European social dimension. The new coordination mechanism aims to strengthen economic policy coordination in order to fill the original EMU constitutional gap deriving from the choice to create a common currency without having an...

The European Semester is a yearly process of the European Union to improve economic policy coordination and ensure the implementation of the EU's economic rules. Each Semester concludes with recommendations for the euro area as a whole and for each EU member state. We show that implementation of...

After three years of mixed operational experiences, the European Semester has been streamlined and further reform has recently been suggested by the European Commission. We outline the major modifications and evaluate to what extent this streamlining has affected the nature of the 2015...