Socio-Economic and Political Challenges of EU Member Countries: Grasping the Policy Direction of the European Semester

Sara Casagrande () and Bruno Dallago ()
Additional contact information
Sara Casagrande: University of Trento via Inama, 5
Bruno Dallago: University of Trento via Inama, 5

Comparative Economic Studies, 2022, vol. 64, issue 3, No 4, 487-519

Abstract: Abstract The European Semester (ES) and the country-specific recommendations (CSRs) have been introduced with the purpose to promote flexibility and adaptation to national circumstances in the governance of fiscal policies. To assess whether the ES has contributed to reconcile economic and social objectives, we measured, through the distance to frontier (DTF) score methodology, the distance of each member country from a benchmark based on EU aims and values defined in the EU treaties. Results show that EU member countries are far from the benchmark and CSRs have not prevented a progressive deterioration of stability and cohesion from an economic, political and social perspective. A content analysis of the CSRs issued from 2011 to 2018 and a comparison with the DTF scores reveal a weak connection between member countries’ performance and CSRs. Despite the social content of many CSRs, we actually observe a “commodification” of their goals. CSRs promote a society functional to flexible and competitive markets, and compatible with the requirements of fiscal discipline and sustainability. This neoliberal approach apparently played a role in the EU deterioration and makes the “socialization” of the ES a process with ambiguous implications for European citizens.

Keywords: Benchmark; Content analysis; Country-specific recommendations; Distance to frontier score methodology; European Monetary Union; European Semester; Fiscal policy coordination; Policy direction (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C43 C80 E61 F15 O52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1057/s41294-021-00171-2 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:pal:compes:v:64:y:2022:i:3:d:10.1057_s41294-021-00171-2

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... cs/journal/41294/PS2

DOI: 10.1057/s41294-021-00171-2

Access Statistics for this article

Comparative Economic Studies is currently edited by Nauro Campos

More articles in Comparative Economic Studies from Palgrave Macmillan, Association for Comparative Economic Studies Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().