Unemployment benefits in the EU: the Commission’s approach

Unemployment insurance is a major component of different European welfare regimes, whereby each EU member state has its own distinctive scheme. Despite falling under national competence, the European Commission has exercised pressure over this policy area since the establishment of the European Employment Strategy and, more directly, within the framework of the European Semester. This article retraces such involvement since the 1990s, and, then, by focussing on the Semester, it analyses the Commission's approach to unemployment insurance in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. Qualitatively, the paper explores key EU documents (Annual growth surveys, Joint employment reports and Country reports) to spell out the Commission’s understanding of national unemployment benefits. Quantitatively, it dissects the country-specific recommendations (CSRs) issued to each member state in this policy domain with the aim of ascertaining what the main factors driving their formulation are. The investigation both assigns each CSR to a specific policy category and determines whether it empowers jobseekers or, on the contrary, reduces the protection granted to them. The three data sources combined shed light on the direction, intensity and potential biases of the Commission's approach to domestic unemployment insurance schemes.