This paper analyzes how EU social objectives and policy coordination have been integrated into the Union’s emerging post-crisis architecture of economic governance. Based on extensive interviews with high-level policy makers as well as analysis of published and unpublished documents, the paper argues that between 2011 and 2014, there was a progressive ‘socialization’ of the ‘European Semester’ of policy coordination, in terms of an increasing emphasis on social objectives and targets in the EU’s priorities and country-specific recommendations; an intensification of social monitoring, multilateral surveillance, and peer review; and an enhanced role for social and employment actors, especially the EU Employment and Social Protection Committees (EMCO and SPC). The paper interprets these developments not only as a response by the Commission and other EU institutions to rising social and political discontent among European citizens with the consequences of post-crisis austerity policies, but also as a product of reflexive learning and creative adaptation by social and employment actors to the new institutional conditions of the European Semester: another form of ‘socialization’. The final section of the paper will analyze recent developments under the Juncker Commission, assessing how far and in what ways these may represent a significant shift in substantive content and governance procedures, together with the longer-term implications of the proposals advanced in the ‘Five Presidents’ Report’ (2015) for a ‘deeper and more integrated’ European Semester.
