The European Pillar of Social Rights: perpetuating asymmetrical governance?

Ever since the re-launch of the EU project in the 1980s, political will manifesting itself in hard law and binding targets has led to the realization of EMU amidst the growing financialization of EU economies. The adoption of the European Semester during the crisis reinforced, at least at the early stage of the Semester’s existence, the supremacy of economic and fiscal coordination over other considerations (Costamagna 2013). ‘Social Europe’, on the other hand, achieved EU status in the late 1980s and has been accompanied by various initiatives at EU level, some of which have led to the adoption of social and employment policy Directives. Yet for the most part, ‘Social Europe’ remains an aspiration instead of a reality, with national and supranational modes of policy-making maintaining an uneasy co-existence (Streeck 1995). This paper aims to assess and critically evaluate the recent Commission proposal for a European Pillar of Fundamental Social Rights, part of a broader effort towards a ‘Genuine Economic and Monetary Union’ that will acquire a stronger social dimension. Famously, the European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker is ambitious enough for the Union to achieve a ‘Social Triple A’, (Juncker 2014) and it is within this context that the (still evolving and as yet not finalized) Pillar initiative ought to be conceptualized. The paper places the debate on the Pillar and its viability/appropriateness/applicability within the larger context of the ‘Social Europe’ debate on the one hand, and the economic and financial crisis of recent years on the other. The two are interconnected on several fronts, not least because of the negative (and, for some member states, devastating) effects that the latter has had on the former. In fact, it is the widely accepted recognition of the fact that ‘Social Europe’ has been among the primary victims of the crisis that led Jean Claude Juncker to announce his intention of launching a Social Pillar in 2015. The starting point of this paper is the identification of a major asymmetry in EU governance pertaining to economic and monetary policy on the one hand, and ‘Social Europe’ on the other. The second section subsequently analyses the proposed Pillar of Fundamental Social Rights in terms of its ability to rebalance the EU’s constitutional asymmetry. In doing so, it situates the pillar within the broader hierarchical context of EU economic governance. Third, the paper analyses its ideological content to ascertain whether the pillar moves EU social policy away from is post-2010 neoliberal paradigm or simply reinforces it.