Spanish and Italian trade unions facing EU conditionality during the Great Recession

From 2010 to 2013, the Spanish and Italian governments implemented various austerity reforms that were enforced by the European Union. Although neither of the countries was bailout, both were required to undertake structural reforms in exchange for some kind of financial relief (informal conditionality). This paper argues that EU informal conditionality has impacted on the European and national policymaking styles regarding the participation of trade unions. This is why, in order to understand trade unions’ responses we need to analyse the interplay of both levels. European policymaking style has been categorized as “symbolic corporatism”, and the involvement of trade unions was there mainly through lobbying strategies. On the other hand, Spain and Italy have been characterised as countries with “weak corporatism”, where trade unions tend to exercise their influence through social pacts and general strikes. This paper aims at tracing the involvement of trade unions in the processes of policymaking between the EU and the national governments in order to show how the shift from “symbolic corporatism” to “liberal intergovernmentalism” at the supranational level and from “weak corporatism” to “unilateralism” at the national level have changed the strategic orientations of the trade unions. The paper will thus describe the strategies developed by Spanish and Italian trade unions within the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) and their strategies at the national level from 2010 to 2013, with the aim at identifying the extent to which there has been a transfer of trade unions’ strategies between both levels.