Reconsidering the drivers of country-specific recommendations: The Commission's ideological preferences on wage policies

Joshua Cova

European Union Politics, 2022, vol. 23, issue 4, 639-661

Abstract: As part of the European Semester, the European Commission issues country-specific recommendations for all member states. I contribute to the literature on this political instrument, by considering the determinants of recommendations calling for greater wage moderation and enhanced cost competitiveness. For the most part, research on European economic governance has either understood the European Commission as a politicized and ‘ideological’ institution or as a de-politicized, technocratic actor. My analysis shows that the European Commission's ideological preferences on labour markets and wage bargaining institutions are more convincing predictors than explanations based on economic indicators. By testing a series of multilevel models, I find that irrespective of developments in competitiveness, countries with stronger social actors are more likely to be recipients of country-specific recommendations calling for wage restraint.

Keywords: Country-specific recommendations; European Commission; European Semester; wage†setting (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14651165221102696 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:eeupol:v:23:y:2022:i:4:p:639-661

DOI: 10.1177/14651165221102696

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in European Union Politics
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().