Journal ArticleDOI
EU Financial Assistance Conditionality after 'Two Pack'
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TLDR
In this article, the authors shed some light to the origins and the mechanics of EU financial assistance conditionality, and, secondly, offer a critical appraisal of its role in the context of new EU economic governance, especially after the so-called “Two Pack” set of reforms.Abstract:
Conditionality is the new topos of EU economic governance. In Pringle, the ECJ raised “strict conditionality” to a necessary requirement of assistance to Members in financial distress, and after the recent amendment of Article 136 TFEU this is also explicitly set out in the Treaties. Moreover, conditionality proved to be an extremely powerful instrument. It has been used to press for reforms in recipient countries’ economies, healthcare and pension systems, education and research. On many occasions, the conditions for accessing European financing are prescribed in minute detail. Never before had European institutions been engaged in so close surveillance and micromanagement of domestic public policies. Starting from these observations, this article has two purposes. Firstly, to shed some light to the origins and the mechanics of EU financial assistance conditionality, and, secondly, to offer a critical appraisal of its role in the context of the new EU economic governance, especially after the so-called “Two Pack” set of reforms. Although Regulation 472/2013/EU succeeds in putting all forms of conditional lending under a common EU framework, it fails to address the basic concerns raised by the emergence of conditionality as a cornerstone of EU economic governance. Blurred responsibility, wide executive discretion, and uncertainty as to the legal instruments are some of the points that remain problematic.read more
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Socializing the European Semester? Economic Governance and Social Policy Coordination in Europe 2020
Jonathan Zeitlin,Bart Vanhercke +1 more
TL;DR: The authors analyzes how EU social objectives and policy coordination have been integrated into the Europe 2020 Strategy and the Union's emerging post-crisis architecture of economic governance, based on published and unpublished documents as well as interviews with high-level policy makers.
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Euro crisis responses and the EU legal order : increased institutional variation or constitutional mutation?
TL;DR: The Euro crisis reforms as major example of interstitial institutional change in the EU as mentioned in this paper, and forms of institutional change : unusual sources of law, new tasks for the EU institutions, new organs, competence creep, institutional hybrids, and more differentiated integration.
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Inside the black box: The EU’s economic surveillance of national healthcare systems
Rita Baeten,Bart Vanhercke +1 more
TL;DR: The analysis of the role of the actors involved in the elaboration of EU guidance in the field of health points to the dominance of ‘economic’ actors and relative absence of “health” actors, in spite of increased attempts by the latter to gain influence.
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Revisiting the Dominant Discourse on Conditionality in the EU: The Case of EU Spending Conditionality
TL;DR: In this article, the authors map the rise of EU spending conditionality in the 2014-20 financial period and show how the study of this novel type of conditionality adds to the dominant legal discourse on conditionality.
References
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The JCMS Annual Lecture: The Greek Sovereign Debt Crisis and EMU: A Failing State in a Skewed Regime*
TL;DR: The Greek sovereign debt crisis of 2010 exposed the weaknesses of governance of both the Euro area and Greece as discussed by the authors, and the early discussion on governance reform suggests that its underlying philosophy has not shifted significantly towards more effective economic governance.
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