This article proposes the “muting” of the SGP, the framework of rules that the EU has implemented since the coming into being of the European Monetary Union in the fiscal domain. It is argued herein that the system is far from being credible, from the perspective of the law-as-credibility paradigm. Therefore, the legal condition of the SGP should be “muted”. Three proposals to legally mute the SGP are examined in this article. The Open Method of Coordination is used as a useful model that could be followed from now on in the EU fiscal field. The gains in terms of legal credibility would argue in favour of the muting of the SGP and its correlative conversion into an OMC-like system.

The article examines the implementation of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) in the European Union via National Action Plans (NAPs). We argue that some of the shortcomings currently observed in the implementation process could effectively be addressed through the Open Method of Coordination (OMC) – a governance instrument already used by the European Union (EU) in other policy domains. The article sketches out the polycentric global governance approach envisaged by the UNGPs and discusses the institutional and policy background of their implementation in the EU. It provides an assessment of EU member states’ NAPs on business and human rights, as benchmarked against international NAP guidance, before relating experiences with the existing NAP process to the policy background and rationale of the OMC and considering the conditions for employing the OMC in the business and human rights domain. Building on a recent opinion of the EU Fundamental Rights Agency, the article concludes with a concrete proposal for developing an OMC on business and human rights in the EU.

This article examines both the place of the social dimension in past and on-going debates about the United Kingdom's membership of the European Union and the reciprocal influence of EU and UK institutions on developments in the social policy field. It explores fluctuations in the relationship between economic and social policy, the divisiveness within, between and across political parties, the role of key policy actors in shaping the social agenda, and the failure of attempts to harmonise social welfare systems as enlargement intensified their diversity. We argue that, although difficult to predict, the implications of Brexit for future social policy in the UK and EU may not be so far-reaching as in some other policy areas, due largely to the maintenance of unanimous voting and the subsidiarity principle in many social domains, combined with the shift towards soft law and the widespread resistance of member states to tighter social integration.