EU Policy Coordination Beyond 2010:
Towards an Inclusive Governance
Architecture
Jonathan Zeitlin
European Union Center of Excellence
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Plan of the presentation
• I. Looking backward: the governance of the
Lisbon Strategy, 2000-2010
– A critical overview in three phases
• II. Looking forward: towards an inclusive
governance architecture for the post-Lisbon era
– Architectural design principles for EU policy
coordination
– Governance options beyond 2010: status quo,
Lisbon minus, or a new inclusive architecture?
– Risks and opportunities for EU social policy
coordination
2
A. Architectural design principles
for EU policy coordination
• 1) Enhance overall policy coherence
– Avoid multiple, overlapping, inconsistent strategies
• 2) Improve horizontal coordination and crosssectoral synergies, without sacrificing core policy
objectives
– e.g. economic growth, full employment, social
cohesion, environmental sustainability
• 3) Ensure autonomy, specificity, and visibility of
sectoral processes needed for effective
coordination of complex policy fields
3
Architectural design principles (2)
• 4) Promote mutual learning and evidence-based
policy making
– Through consistent reporting against common
indicators, diagnostic monitoring, peer review, and
evaluation of different national approaches to
achieving common European objectives
• 5) Mobilize increased commitment and
participation by Member State governments,
national publics, and other stakeholders
– Including civil society and subnational actors
4
B. Governance options for EU
policy coordination beyond 2010
• Option 1: the status quo
– Retain existing architecture of Strategy for
Growth and Jobs
• OMC on Social Protection and Social Inclusion to
‘feed in’ to growth and jobs objectives; Integrated
Guidelines and National Reform Programmes to
‘feed out’ to support EU social cohesion goals
• The path of least resistance
• But ‘mutually reinforcing dynamic’ between Lisbon
Strategy and OMC/SPSI has not worked effectively
since 2005 relaunch
5
An incoherent, unsustainable approach
• Disconnect between form and content of 20082011 Integrated Guidelines
– Guidelines remain unchanged from 2005-2008, but
explanatory text becomes more ‘social’
• Renewed Social Agenda calls for reinforcement
of OMC/SPSI through closer links to Lisbon
Strategy
• Leaves the EU with multiple, overlapping,
potentially inconsistent ‘mega strategies’
– Lisbon, Sustainable Development, Energy Policy for
Europe, OMCs (SPSI, Education and Training, etc.)
6
Option 2: Lisbon minus
• Cohen-Tanugi Report, Euroworld 2015
– Recast Lisbon as European strategy for globalization
– Refocus internal component on competitiveness and
innovation
• Interlink environmental, social, and economic dimensions of
a knowledge-driven economy and society, without
monopolizing national and European policies in these areas
• In social policy, concentrate on education, lifelong learning,
mobility, globalization adjustment, integration, population
ageing, flexicurity, and relaunching social dialogue
– Termed ‘Lisbon plus’, but should really be called
‘Lisbon minus’, because of narrower scope relative to
Strategy for Growth and Jobs
7
Architectural design flaws
• Leaves the EU with overlapping, potentially
inconsistent strategies
– ‘Coordination of coordination’ would become a major
problem at both European and national levels
• Risks subordinating social and employment
policies to competitiveness and innovation
objectives, without providing a legitimate and
effective mechanism for reconciling
countervailing but equally indispensable goals
• Narrower scope makes it even less likely to
inspire national ownership and participation than
the Strategy for Growth and Jobs
8
Option 3: a new, inclusive
governance architecture
• EU needs a new overarching strategy for
the post-Lisbon era based on four equal,
mutually reinforcing pillars:
– Economic growth
– Full employment
– Social cohesion
– Environmental sustainability
9
A cockpit, not a Christmas tree
• Each pillar should have its own objectives,
guidelines, targets, indicators, national
strategies, peer review, and evaluation process
• Incorporating these common sectoral objectives
and indicators into the EU’s overarching strategy
is not like adding ornaments to a Christmas tree,
but rather like equipping a cockpit with the full
set of instruments needed to avoid flying blind
10
Reconceiving the Integrated Guidelines
and National Reform Programmes
• In order to avoid overload, IGs and NRPs should
be reconceived as twin apexes of a synthetic
policy coordination process built up from
sectoral OMCs for each pillar
– Sites where conflicting priorities can be reconciled,
not unified/centralized replacements for sectoral
coordination processes themselves
– Each sectoral policy coordination process should
explicitly incorporate indicators for monitoring mutual
interactions between them
• feeding in/feeding out, mainstreaming, ex ante/ex post
impact assessment
11
Maximize opportunities
for mutual learning
• To maximize opportunities for mutual learning,
MS should report consistently on progress
towards each objective/guideline, using common
European indicators as far as possible
– Common indicators should be outcome-oriented,
responsive to policy interventions, subject to clear/
accepted normative interpretation, timely, & revisable
– Indicators should be sufficiently comparable and
disaggregable to serve as diagnostic tools for
improvement/self-correction by national/local actors,
rather than as soft sanctions/shaming devices to
ensure MS compliance with European targets
– Limitations of existing Lisbon Assessment Framework
12
Promote horizontal coherence and crosssectoral synergies through joined-up
thematic strategies
• Proposed for flexicurity and active inclusion
– Could be extended to child poverty/well-being, active ageing,
gender equality/work-family reconciliation
• Adoption of common European principles
• Intensive follow-up, monitoring, and evaluation
–
–
–
–
Joint indicators and assessment frameworks
Thematic peer reviews & comparison of good/bad practices
Full involvement of all relevant actors
Network of local observatories (proposed for active inclusion)
• Possible use of EU recommendations
– Common and/or country specific
13
Expand stakeholder participation
• Open up sectoral coordination processes and
NRPs to active participation by civil society and
subnational actors
– Ensure coordination of NRPs by Prime Ministers’
offices rather than Finance or Economics ministries
– Revive/reinvigorate NAPs for employment & inclusion
– Promote local and regional action plans
– Develop indicators of participatory governance
• Timely involvement in all phases of the policy cycle
• Two-way dialogue rather than one-way consultation
• Benchmark national performance & compare practices
14
C. Risks and opportunities for EU
social policy coordination
• Subsidiarity
– Member States retain primary competence for the
organization of their social protection systems
– Wide variations in institutional structure of national
welfare states & political sensitivity of reforms
– Understandable reluctance of Member States to
move beyond common social objectives/indicators to
European guidelines, targets & country-specific
recommendations
15
But the horse is out of the stable
• But MS are already subject to EU guidelines and
recommendations on reform of their social
protection systems for financial sustainability
and higher employment under Lisbon Strategy
• Renewed Social Agenda proposes extending
targets, common principles, enhanced
monitoring, and recommendations to OMC/SPSI
• Question is not whether but how EU should be
involved in coordinating MS responses to
common challenges of social protection reform,
while respecting legitimate national diversity
16
Backdoor harmonization?
• Experience of European Employment Strategy
shows that EU guidelines & recommendations
need not lead to backdoor harmonization or
imposition of ‘one-size-fits-all’ policy models
– Employment guidelines have proved adaptable to
wide variety of employment systems across EU,
encouraging convergence of objectives, performance,
& broad policy approaches, but not harmonization of
programs, rules, or institutions
– Country-specific recommendations have added value
to national policy making by feeding back results of
peer evaluation into domestic debates, and drawing
attention to overlooked problems even in bestperforming Member States
17
Dynamic subsidiarity
• OMC should be understood as a new form
of dynamic subsidiarity
– Based not on a rigid allocation of
competences, but instead on collaboration
between different levels of governance in
which each participating unit contributes its
distinctive expertise and resources to tackling
common problems cutting across jurisdictions
18
Loss of autonomy?
• Even those in favor of strengthening the social
dimension of the Lisbon Strategy may fear that
incorporating the OMC/SPSI into a new inclusive
governance architecture could weaken EU social policy
coordination and reduce its autonomy
• A legitimate concern, as demonstrated by the experience
of the EES since 2005
• But retaining procedural autonomy while sacrificing
political influence is the greater risk facing OMC/SPSI,
since MS are already subject to one-sided coordination
of social protection reforms under the Strategy for
Growth & Jobs
19
Procedural safeguards
• Risk of reduced autonomy for EU social policy
coordination would be offset by new governance
architecture based on four equal, mutually
reinforcing pillars
• Consistent with this balanced, inclusive
governance architecture, it would be important
to ensure that NRPs are coordinated by Prime
Ministers’ offices rather than by Finance or
Economics ministries, and that the EU’s Spring
Socio-Economic Summit is prepared by the
General Affairs Council rather than Ecofin
20
Realizing the original promise of
the Lisbon Strategy
• With this new governance architecture in place
from 2010, European social, economic,
environmental, and employment policies could
at last begin to work together in a mutually
reinforcing way to deliver faster sustainable
growth, more and better jobs, and greater social
cohesion, as envisaged by the designers of the
original Lisbon Strategy eight years ago.
21