Differentiation and the European Semester – an examination of country specific recommendations

Differentiated integration (DI) in the European Union has become a significant topic of interest for those scholars engaged in European integration. A great deal of literature on DI focuses on the evolution of differentiation as a response to crisis, as a means of compromise between the very different contexts of member states, and as a necessary component of enlargement. A frequent area of sub-text linking many of these studies is the suggestion of potential structural weakness; that DI as a process may portend vulnerabilities in the post-war consensus of a shared commitment to European integration, and that the remarkability of DI is precisely because of its contrast to a notion of linear progress toward an ever closer union. This paper takes a more neutral stance in assessing the degree of DI in the European Semester, for the purpose of ascertaining the utility of DI toward maintaining a cohesive macroeconomic convergence tool. Employing a dataset that captures all of the European Semester’s Country-Specific Recommendations (CSRs) from 2012-2019, the paper explores the form and content of CSRs to offer an overview of the strengths and weaknesses of DI in the EU’s macroeconomic arena. The tentative findings are that the highly tailored prescriptions within the CSRs illustrate the utility of DI towards maintaining a cohesive economic union.