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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 October 2017
This chapter examines the implications of the new European economic governance framework from a policy-learning point of view. It is argued that a new form of EU learning influence has emerged in the wake of the EMU legal and institutional crisis. The author takes the view that an inherent asymmetry in the EMU, namely the presence of a unified monetary policy without a commensurate coordination of social policy and wage-setting mechanisms, contributed to the development of the crisis. The latent consequences of this flaw—diverging (wage) growth and cost competitiveness—were brought into full view when the global financial crisis struck. In response, new wage governance instruments were established in order to exert learning pressure on wage development and wage-setting systems in the EU. The substantive orientation of this new framework is examined with an eye to determining whether it qualifies as a learning process under which wage and spending cuts supplant the role of currency depreciation as a means of addressing external economic shocks and competitiveness gaps. Finally, drawing on recent findings concerning the workings of the ‘European Semester’, the chapter assesses whether the new economic governance reforms are already generating learning outcomes at the domestic level.
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3 These are Regulation (EU) No 1173/2011 of 16 November 2011 ([2011] OJ L306/1); Regulation (EU) No 1174/2011 of 16 November 2011 ([2011] OJ L306/8); Regulation (EU) No 1175/2011 of 16 November 2011 amending Council Regulation (EC) No 1466/97 ([2011] OJ L306/12); Regulation (EU) No 1176/2011 of 16 November 2011 ([2011] OJ L306/25); Council Regulation (EU) No 1177/2011 of 8 November 2011 amending Regulation (EC) No 1467/97 on ([2011] OJ L306/33); and Council Directive 2011/85/EU ([2011] OJ L306/41).
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37 The corrective arms of the SGP and Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure are not included in the European Semester since these procedures are always initiated solely on an ad hoc basis.
38 ‘A New European Interventionism? The Impact of the New European Economic Governance on Wages and Collective Bargaining’, n 29 above.
39 Commission, ‘Scoreboard for the Surveillance of Macroeconomic Imbalances’.
40 According to the ECB’s price stability objective the threshold would be 6% and not 9%, which is considered too generous.
41 ‘A Pact for the Euro’, n 4 above.
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64 Croatia, Italy, Hungary and Slovenia: seen 62 above, 19.
65 Ibid, 284.
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1 Johnston and Hancké, n 20 above.
2 While household debt is falling in Germany and moderately increasing in Austria, it is dramatically increasing in the Southern periphery, with all countries well above the Euro (12) area average. In the Netherlands household debt increases rapidly as well, though not as fast as in Ireland and Spain.