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Commission Entrepreneurship and the Debasing of Social Europe Before and After the Eurocrisis
Author(s) -
Crespy Amandine,
Menz Georg
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
jcms: journal of common market studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.54
H-Index - 90
eISSN - 1468-5965
pISSN - 0021-9886
DOI - 10.1111/jcms.12241
Subject(s) - commission , argument (complex analysis) , corporate governance , entrepreneurship , liberalization , political science , element (criminal law) , social policy , european commission , european union , economics , public administration , political economy , economic policy , law , finance , biochemistry , chemistry
The bulk of the literature on ‘social Europe’ has suggested that social policy at the level of the EU remains to be characterized by the interplay of courts and markets. While we do not disagree with this argument, our objective is to shed light on the European Commission's entrepreneurship, an element which appears to be somewhat bereft of scholarly attention. We show how, by displaying social acuity, defining problems and building teams, the Commission has actively promoted a policy agenda focused on liberal market building at the expense of socially minded regulation. This was however only made possible by a new constellation among the Member States after 2004. We substantiate this claim by documenting the activity of the Commission in two crucial policy domains of the post‐Lisbon era: the liberalization of service provision, and the impact of the new macro‐economic governance on social policy after the financial and debt crisis.